Saudi Arabia

Remembering Eden Knight

On 24 March about 200 people, mostly young Saudi trans, non-binary, and queer people, protested outside the Saudi Arabian Embassy in London about the treatment of a 23 year old trans woman called Eden Knight. Eden Knight died by suicide on or around 12 March. In her final tweet, she explained that she had been living in America when she met “fixers” who coerced and tricked her into returning to Saudi Arabia. She later found out they had been paid by her parents. Once home she was forced to detransition. She felt life was not worth living in these circumstances and killed herself. A lot of the...

Truce unlikely to end Yemen war

Saudi Arabia is looking for a way to end the disastrous, protracted war it has been fighting in Yemen for the last seven years. A surge in fighting has given way to an uneasy two-month truce (from 1 April) brokered by the United Nations. The intervention of a Saudi-led coalition into Yemen’s civil war has devastated a country which, even before the Saudi campaign started in 2015, was one of the world’s poorest. Yemen’s population is about 30 million, and 24mn, or 80%, now need humanitarian aid. 377,000 have died as a consequence of the war, the majority from hunger and disease. The UN states...

Understanding the war in Yemen

Since 2014 Yemen's civil war, in which a brutal imperialist intervention by Saudi Arabia is increasingly central, has produced an appalling humanitarian catastrophe. As a contribution to rousing the British labour movement to protest against the war, including the UK government's support for the Saudi intervention, we republish this interview from American socialist magazine New Politics . For more about Yemen and Saudi Arabia on our website, see here . The conflict in Yemen has been going on for a long time with horrendous human consequences. Non specialists find the situation extremely...

"Energy security" and priorities

By the time of Rishi Sunak’s spring statement even BP’s ex-CEO John Browne was arguing for windfall tax on energy firms. But instead of a windfall tax, government ministers negotiated a “tacit agreement” from Big Oil that they would… “step up gas and oil exploration”. As Sunak was organising homegrown climate catastrophe, Johnson travelled to Riyadh to beg Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for more oil. The Saudi monarchy, who chose to bookend Johnson’s visit with mass executions of their political opponents, are in no hurry to pump more oil. Spiralling prices mean all the OPEC+ nations are...

Boris Johnson's friendly tyrant

The seven-year war in Yemen by Saudi Arabia and its allies has killed around 400,000 people , and Saudi air strikes have killed some 9,000 civilians. The UK has supplied £22 billion of weaponry to Saudi in those seven years. On 12 March the Saudi regime officially killed 81 people on grounds such as “deviant beliefs”. So on 16 March Boris Johnson visited Saudi Arabia and the UAE, trying (unsuccessfully, it seems) to schmooze them into increasing oil and gas production to cover lost Russian supply. Johnson declared that “Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are key international partners...

Saudi oil is not better than Russian oil

The UK should stop getting oil from an aggressively imperialist regime with an appalling human rights record? Yes! Then why does Boris Johnson want to get more oil from Saudi Arabia? At time of writing Johnson has just arrived in the United Arab Emirates and he will shortly head to Saudi Arabia. He is asking these blood-soaked regimes to increase production so they can replace the UK’s supplies from Russia. Johnson has declared that "Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are key international partners in that effort" - to marginalise Putin. The Tories are also pushing to increase oil and...

Against the Saudi war in Yemen

Joe Biden has announced the end of US support for Saudi-led offensive military operations in Yemen, arguing in a foreign policy speech that they have “created a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe”. The details remain to be seen, but we should use this shift to exert pressure on the British government too. Intervention by the predominantly Arab military coalition headed by Saudi Arabia, directed against Iranian-backed Shia Islamist/nationalist Houthi militias, has resulted in many tens of thousand of fatalities, including over ten thousand civilians killed directly by coalition military...

The Perfect Candidate

I’ve been wanting to watch The Perfect Candidate ever since watching Wadjda , by the same director Haifaa al-Mansour, last year. For far too long, the former was not readily available online: it finally is now. Haifaa al-Mansour is Saudi Arabia’s first female filmmaker, and one of the countries most well-known and controversial. Both films are set in Saudi Arabia; both follow outspoken, confident female protagonists, living within and struggling against the misogynist society they find themselves within. Wadjda, the 2012 movie’s title character, is a ten-year-old rebellious girl who...

The hijab and the Saudi factor

Sadia Hameed is a spokesperson for the Council of ex-Muslims in Britain , and a director of Gloucestershire Sisters, a women's organisation working in minority communities, particularly around tackling harmful traditional practices. She was interviewed by Sacha Ismail for Solidarity . See here for wider debate in Solidarity on the ban of the hijab in schools . We need to question the idea of multiculturalism. Diversity of culture is a great thing, but harmful ideas and practices need to be challenged and criticised. Multiculturalism should be about taking the wonderful parts of all cultures...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.