Saudi Arabia unashamedly championed in UK security review
UK defence and security review places emphasis on human rights yet describes Saudi Arabia as “vital partner”
In its trumpeting of Britain’s global “soft power” influence, the government’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) unveiled on Monday contains a glaring contradiction.
More than once, it stressed the importance of promoting “our values and interests ”, promoting “stability, good governance and human rights”, and “civil liberties”.
Twenty pages on, the document says the UK will continue to work with close allies, including “vital partners, such as Saudi Arabia, in the Middle East”.
It notes that the UK’s relations with six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates - “are broad and deep”.
It refers to a “new Gulf Strategy ” building a “permanent and more subtantial UK military presence” - a reference, among other projects, to a new UK naval base in Bahrain.
This is the Bahrain whose security forces, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, are continuing to torture detainees during interrogation, despite claims by the British government that Bahrain has reformed its practices.
Saudi Arabia is the UK’s largest single market for arms. Saudi courts continue to hand down severe sentences, recording the highest number of executions there since 1995, according to human rights groups.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/defence-and-security-blog/2015/nov/24/saudi-arabia-unashamedly-championed-in-uk-security-review
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