Yup, that is the setting for today. I saw the news yesterday or the day before and it angered me. The article (at https://cpj.org/2024/10/saudi-arabia-sentences-cartoonist-mohammed-al-ghamdi-to-23-years/) from the CPJ (committee to protect journalists) is as misguided as it is hypocritical. In the first instance I do not know Mohammed al-Ghamdi, I never saw his cartoons or red anything from him. As far as I am concerned as long as the CPJ does not hold its western journalists and editors up to any kind of standard, it needs to shut up. Yesterday I touched on the Politico article regarding Prince Khalid bin Bandar al Saud and it opened up some issues for me. There is more, the media neglects the interesting ‘good’ Saudi Arabia does and trivialises the harm that Saudi Arabia gets from Houthi terrorists. As such I say that the CPJ needs to shut up.
We are given that “a Saudi cartoonist for the Qatar-based Lusail newspaper, who was sentenced on an undisclosed date in 2024 to 23 years in prison on charges that his cartoons were sympathetic to Qatar and insulted the Saudi government” Saudi Arabia has laws, they might not be the laws the west heralds, but this is a Saudi event. I might not agree, but if I am in Saudi Arabia I would have to adhere to Saudi Laws and there is the chance that my articles fall in bad waters with Saudi Arabia. I do not know as I am not privy to those laws. As far as I know I never known and intentionally insulted anyone in the Saudi government (I might be wrong in this).
Countries have laws, the west (Commonwealth and Europe) for the most on the issue of freedom of speech and as such I tend to use that freedom of speech, yet in that instance I try to maintain a civil tongue. And when Charlie Hedbo was killed, I also supported France, I stood at a vigil in Sydney. I was not aware to the stage that drove someone to kill Charlie Hedbo, but I was in agreement that we had to protest this because Charlie Hedbo was not anti-Muslim. He drew on several occasions images that would have offended the church (the Vatican), as such he was equally ‘diplomatic’ on all faiths.
Yet this is not about Charlie Hedbo, this is about the double standard the CPJ uses and until they hold western media to a serious level of account, they need to put up or shut up.
This is pretty much it. I did not check some of the claims made and I am not saying these claims weren’t true. We get “It is time to break this longstanding pattern of imprisoning journalists. Saudi authorities must release al-Ghamdi and drop all charges against him” and I am not opposing this, but I find it interesting that numbers and reasons for imprisonment aren’t given. It this is about less then 5 journalists, it seems a trivial matter (compared to Turkey and a few other places). And lets not forget these Saudi Laws are all documented and as such these ‘journalists’ (optionally a mere one cartoonist) might have decided to leave the country, was that done?
The CPJ gives us that 50 Journalists were killed in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory in 2024. So, where is the stink on these 50 journalists? Oh, and why is it “Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory” and why do we not see the segregation between “West Bank and the Gaza Strip” and “Israel”? It was a simple setting, but the CPJ seems to use a simplistic brush for that. And between 2018 and 2024 we see merely one seemingly killed and I raised plenty of articles between 2018 and 2024 shedding doubt on that setting. Another article gives us that 10 people were imprisoned all whilst the 2023 numbers have a top 10 (Saudi Arabia wasn’t there) and the top is China with 44 imprisoned, Russia with 22, Iran with 17, and Turkey with 13 imprisoned. Yet in all of these cases, we see an absence of reasons and there is the issue. The (western) press has in the last 10 years lost pretty much all credibility, as such a reason for imprisonment is required. I have an issue with the CPJ because a population with less credibility than a drug pusher in a school yard has several issues and I do not think the CPJ is in a position to demand any kind of charge drop until the status quo of journalists is re-established with a level of credibility that most of us find acceptable. The chase for digital dollars in the last decade pretty much diminished their right for a ‘protected’ status.
People might not like my view on the matter, but that is my preview on the matter. Perhaps the CPJ would like to rewrite the article in something more palatable?
Have a great Saturday.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 