An article on Vox takes note of a comment made by Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross as he took note of the lack of protesters during the visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: “Not one guy with a bad placard,” he said, approvingly, seemingly interpreting this as a sign of President Donald Trump’s popularity.
When the CNBC interviewer Becky Quist pointed out that this perhaps was because Saudi Arabia officials “control people and don't allow them to come and express their feelings quite the same as we do here,” Ross stuck to his view. “In theory, that could be true,” he said, “but boy there was certainly no sign of it. There was not a single effort at any incursion. There wasn't anything. The mood was a genuinely good mood.”
The “good mood” for the American officials is achieved by repression of expression by Saudi people. As Human Rights Watch reports, the Saudi regime routinely sentences dissidents to long prison sentences for crimes resulting from publishing criticism of the government, giving interviews, and even writing political poetry. Such convictions continue, despite Ross’s claim in the same interview that Saudi Arabia is “liberalizing.”
Saudi Arabia’s practices are consistent with its constitution, which specifically allows the prohibition of speech that fosters “sedition or division,” as well as speech that harms “the state’s security and its public relations” — or that “detracts from man’s dignity.”
This is obviously quite distinct from the United States’ constitutional guarantee of free expression in the First Amendment, which prohibits laws “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” Yet President Trump — with his open disdain for the “fake media,” his calls to make it easier to sue for libel, and his suggestions that street protests exist only because liberals pay protesters — appears in some ways more comfortable with the Saudi approach. And it’s not just a question of the president’s attitude: There are disturbing signs of a nationwide attempt to crack down on dissent.
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When the CNBC interviewer Becky Quist pointed out that this perhaps was because Saudi Arabia officials “control people and don't allow them to come and express their feelings quite the same as we do here,” Ross stuck to his view. “In theory, that could be true,” he said, “but boy there was certainly no sign of it. There was not a single effort at any incursion. There wasn't anything. The mood was a genuinely good mood.”
The “good mood” for the American officials is achieved by repression of expression by Saudi people. As Human Rights Watch reports, the Saudi regime routinely sentences dissidents to long prison sentences for crimes resulting from publishing criticism of the government, giving interviews, and even writing political poetry. Such convictions continue, despite Ross’s claim in the same interview that Saudi Arabia is “liberalizing.”
Saudi Arabia’s practices are consistent with its constitution, which specifically allows the prohibition of speech that fosters “sedition or division,” as well as speech that harms “the state’s security and its public relations” — or that “detracts from man’s dignity.”
This is obviously quite distinct from the United States’ constitutional guarantee of free expression in the First Amendment, which prohibits laws “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” Yet President Trump — with his open disdain for the “fake media,” his calls to make it easier to sue for libel, and his suggestions that street protests exist only because liberals pay protesters — appears in some ways more comfortable with the Saudi approach. And it’s not just a question of the president’s attitude: There are disturbing signs of a nationwide attempt to crack down on dissent.
Read the full article -
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