Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Alastair Sloan
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UK: Championing human rights while creating conflict?
Last week, the small English town of Farnborough hosted the Security and Policing Event. It was a commercial festival for human rights abusers wanting to get their hands on weapons for state repression – with previous attendees including delegations from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Libya and Algeria, amongst...
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The US should think again about arming Ukraine via Abu Dhabi
Over five thousand civilians have now died in eastern Ukraine, and one and a half million people have been displaced, through no fault of their own. They are the victims of the stand-off between the West and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Though the Kremlin’s accusations of a “Western-backed neo-Nazi coup”...
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Inside Conservative Friends of Israel
A wine-spattered copy of the parliamentary guest list for the Conservative Friends of Israel’s “Annual Business Lunch”, which took place in December last year, has made it onto my desk. For those of you who don’t know, CFI is a pressure group for pro-Israel interests in Westminster; between two-thirds...
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Advocating violence through silence: the anti-Islamist West
Last Sunday, three UAE citizens, sisters Asma Khalifa Al-Suwaidi, Mariam Khalifa Al-Suwaidi and Alyaziyah Khalifa Al-Suwaidi, were told to report to an Abu Dhabi police station. The trio had been campaigning for the release of Dr Issa Al-Suwaidi, their brother, who is serving a ten-year sentence on what are...
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How Britain’s pro-Israel lobby invests in young parliamentary candidates
On Friday, human rights activist and Labour Party political candidate, Mick Bowman, was beaten, tear-gassed and arrested by Israeli soldiers while protesting in the West Bank, just north of Ramallah. Aged 57, Bowman was detained without charge for 24 hours, interrogated by various officials and military staff, and then released....
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Bahraini exiles test Britain's policy on statelessness
The Al-Khalifa monarchy in Bahrain recently stripped over 70 exiled activists of their citizenship, eight of whom live in Britain. In 2012, they did something similar, stripping 31 human rights and pro-democracy activists of Bahraini citizenship, 11 of them living in the UK. These new exiles are testing Britain’s...
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Israel values cattle more than its foreign workers
The Israeli government has come under fire for allowing the abuse of 25,000 Thai migrant workers, who make up almost the entire agricultural workforce. According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), reforms to the system agreed on in 2011 that sought to protect the rights of migrant...
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King Abdullah: A missed opportunity
The passing of King Abdullah last week saw a sense of despondency amongst many reformist Saudis, many of whom feel the reign of King Abdullah represented a (now lost) opportunity for reform. In education, King Abdullah introduced a generous scholarship programme to send Saudis overseas to universities in Western Europe,...
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From Westminster to Riyadh, British arms deals stink of corruption
This week, Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) released new figures which reveal the £3.8 billion in arms sales that the British government has approved for export to Saudi Arabia since 2010. The bulk of this has come from Britain’s largest arms company, BAE Systems. Whether it’s cowardice, laziness or, as...
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How did the House of Saud respond to revolutionary spirit sweeping the Arab world?
How did the House of Saud respond to the revolutionary spirit sweeping the Arab world in 2011? Just like their playboy sons dancing in the nightclubs of London, who would be otherwise stultified by life in the kingdom wherein Islam’s two holiest sites are situated, they threw money at...
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The perfect year for a deal with Iran
This is the Chinese year of the sheep; the UN’s International Year of Soil; and the year that NASA plans to land a spacecraft on a planet called Ceres, wherever that is. It’s also the year that the West should make a deal with Iran. Although it’s mentioned far too...
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Why does Washington always ignore the best advice?
In 2009, the Central Intelligence Agency warned senior US policy-makers that their controversial drone strike programme might backfire. Washington ignored the CIA; the following year, the frequency of drone strikes increased rapidly. In Pakistan, a record 751 people were killed, including 84 civilians. Neither the hundreds dying in the bomb...
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Islamophobia and Europe's refugee crisis
How long does it take a continent to forget its past? Three generations – if Europe’s attitude to Middle Eastern war refugees is any indicator. The Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland believes the numbers fleeing conflict are at their worst since 1945. Yet, with some exceptions – notably...
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Ignoring human rights: another fawning pawn for the UAE
Lawyer Mohammed Al-Roken, from the United Arab Emirates, is in trouble. He is serving his second year of a 10-year jail term. He is a prisoner of conscience, say Amnesty International, imprisoned solely for his work as a lawyer and activist, defending others whose rights have been denied, and...
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When will Arab states step up and face ISIS?
Saudi Arabia, with nearly $60 billion in defence spending each year, is the world’s fourth largest military spender after the United States, China and Russia. In the Middle East, its arsenal is second only to Israel. Their military has over a thousand tanks; its top-of-the-range air force boasts over...
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Western academics OK human rights abuses in the Gulf
Mass abuse of migrant workers by the Gulf monarchies and sheikhdoms has a fan-club in the West; a clique of academics, lawyers and ideologues who think that exploitative labour is OK. The last few months have seen a major push from this group to help the GCC states get...
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The London lobbyists spinning for UAE
Last month, the UK Defence Secretary called the United Arab Emirates “one of our closest allies and partners.” His statement comes from a long tradition of sucking up to the oil rich Kingdom. But why is the UK partnering so closely with what Nick McGeehan, Human Rights Watch researcher on...
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Gold smuggling increases to beat new tariffs
It looks like any of the other independent jewellery shops in the coastal city of Ernakalum, southern Kerala. The glass shop front sits within Broadway Market: three hundred wholesale outlets selling spices, electronics, jewellery and textiles. I’m here to meet the owner, who runs a seemingly respectable retail outfit, with...
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Yemen's former President Saleh and the language of terror
One day you are America’s closest ally on the war on terror, the next you find yourself on their hit list. And so the mad circus of this endless war gyrates on. This year it’s the ex-President of Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh. Despite years as an ally of Washington,...
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Kuwait is failing its most loyal residents
The Kuwaiti government have offered citizenship to more than 100,000 Bidoon (short for the Arabic bidoon jinsiya, meaning “without nationality”). Not Kuwaiti citizenship – but citizenship from the Comoros islands. A flickering light bulb of a nation, strung out across several islands between Madagascar and the east African coast –...
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The price of positive reviews of Bahrain's sham 'reforms'
Not much, as British parliamentary records reveal – the ruling Al-Khalifa family shelled out just £5,400 per head for British parliamentary grandees Baroness Scotland of Asthal, Lord Gulam Noon, Hazel Blears MP, Lord Patel of Bradford and Lord Clive Soley to visit the Kingdom in April. I’ve recently acquired a...
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Domestic workers suffer under the enduring kafala system
Tahira’s arm was broken, after yet another vicious assault from her employer. I say “employer” – in reality, Tahira wasn’t being paid. She slept on the floor of the house, with no blanket or mattress, and received only one meal per day. Her passport, from her native Indonesia, had...
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How money from pro-Israel donors controls Westminster
Around this time last year, parliamentary records show, the retired property developer and hugely generous Labour party donor, Sir David Garrard, had given a modest £60,000 towards the party’s election campaign for 2015. It came in addition to around half a million he had already given since 2003. Fast forward...
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Western trade to Israel is on the rise, is BDS really working?
There is good news and bad news of late for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. On the one hand, companies such as Veolia, willing partners in the occupation, are losing out on mega-contracts. Despite plans to withdraw from Israel, the French company just lost a $750 million contract...