Saudi paid HRW to cover up LGBT rights abuses

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Human Rights Watch (HRW) has apologised after accepting a sizable donation from a Saudi real estate baron on the condition that it does not use the money to look into the kingdom’s abuses of the LGBT+ community, the Intercept reported.

In 2012, HRW’s Executive Director Kenneth Roth accepted $470,000 from Saudi real-estate magnet Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber through a UK-based charity.

In an apology posted on its website on Friday last week, HRW said that the funds have now been returned.“In 2012, Human Rights Watch made a deeply regrettable decision to accept a donation that included conditions that the funds not be used to support HRW’s work on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the Middle East and North Africa,” the watchdog wrote in the statement.

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“We also regret that the grant was made by the owner of a company that Human Rights Watch had previously identified as complicit in labor rights abuse. This decision stood in stark contrast to our core values.”

It added that an investigation will be launched “to understand why our stringent protocols and policies on vetting grants and donors failed”.

Homosexuality is illegal in Saudi Arabia, punishable by death.

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