Workers' Liberty

Yayha al Faifi fled Saudi Arabia in 2002 after he was sacked from his job with British Aerospace for trying to organise a workers' meeting to discuss new contracts. He has continued the struggle for workers' rights in Saudi Arabia ever since.

Saudi Embassy, 30-32 Charles St W1 (Nearest T: Green Park) Click here for more details.
Start: 31 Oct 2007 - 6:00pm
End: 31 Oct 2007 - 8:00pm

Saudi Arabia's despot King Abdullah bin Abdul Azaz al Saud will be coming to Britain on an official state visit at the end of October. Saudi Arabia is one of the most oppressive societies on earth: an Islamist hell hole in which there are no workers' organisations, political parties or independent media; in which women are kept in apartheid-like purdah, religious minorities harrassed and gay people systematically persecuted; and in which floggings, torture and public beheadings are the norm.

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has launched a criminal inquiry into the dodgy business practices of BAE Systems, the worlds fourth largest arms supplier.

It is hard to express how utterly disgusted I am by the Serious Fraud Office dropping its investigation into corruption in the deal between BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia.

Amnesty International has recently published its “league table” of rates of execution in countries around the world.

80% of executions worldwide were carried out by just one country. There are no prizes for guessing which...

Yahya al Alfaifi worked as a communication engineering technician (command post technician) at the British Aerospace plant at Dharan in Saudi Arabia for four years. He was sacked in 2002 for organising a meeting of BAe workers, considered a “a trade union action” in Saudi Arabia.

THEIR DISASTER RELIEF, AND OURS

The gross neglect and incompetence with which the US government responded to the New Orleans disaster is now well known.

Around 25 lesbian and gay activists went to the Saudi Arabian Embassy in London on 17 May to protest at the arrests and punishment of 105 men in the country, after allegedly attending a gay wedding in March this year. The protest, organised jointly by Outrage and the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association. It was one of hundreds that took place in more than 40 countries to mark the first International Day Against Homophobia.

By Cathy Nugent

In February Saudi Arabia held the first round of municipal council elections — the country’s first direct elections since 1964. As democratic elections go they are very poor:

Notes of a talk given by Michael Kyriazopoulos at our AWL branch meeting in August

• Moving on up?

• Massive
• BAE bungs
• Feudal blues
• Siberian blues
• Viva, left of centre politicians!

Moving on up?

Residents of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest have been promised that should London's bid to host the 2012 Olympics goes ahead, their boroughs will benefit from 'the most significant urban and environmental regeneration ever seen in London'.

SSP Research, Policy & Media Unit
Press Release: 17/01/04

The Scottish Socialist Party Parliamentary group today issued a warning to the Scottish Executive that they would be 'dining with despots' if they were to accept an invitation from His Royal Highness Prince Turki Al Faisal for dinner at the Caledonian Hilton Hotel on Monday, 26th January.

David Osler visited Saudi Arabia recently and looks at the Orwellian picture behind 'our friends in the Midle East'

George Orwell himself probably could not have thought up a name as archetypically Orwellian as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. But that is the name the police go by in Saudi Arabia, and their control of public space is almost total. Riyadh is what the fictional 1984 looks like in the actual 2002.