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Blogs by Bill Ward
Freedom of Speech! 1/18/2015 3:59:51 AM
One of the privileges of the fluke of birth, which led to us being lucky enough to be born in western democracies, is the freedom to say and write pretty much whatever we want. Most of us take that for granted but recent events have served to bring home just how fortunate we are.
Many people have paid the ultimate price to gain us the right to freedom of speech and as we saw recently in Paris, there are people still having to give their lives for what most of us would consider a very basic human right.
When I think of the actions of extremists, I am reminded of the saying we were taught as children, “Sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me!” Unfortunately, it seems extremists of all types are so threatened by what is said, written or drawn that they turn to guns and bombs.
However, what has motivated me to write this blog is the fate of Raif Badawi who, most of you will know, has been imprisoned for ten years in Saudi Arabia and sentenced to receive 1000 lashes for promoting freedom of speech on his blog. He received the first 50 of those lashes last week. Now what is extra interesting about it being Saudi Arabia acting so extremely is that they are one of the west’s key allies in the Middle East but we seem unable or unwilling to exert sufficient influence to change this terrible injustice.
What isn’t so surprising about it being Saudi Arabia, is that they publicly behead women and have one of the worst human rights records in the world. They are completely intolerant of any form of criticism as has been demonstrated by the way they have treated Raif Badawi.
As I write this blog with the most serious repercussion being some negative comments, I am in awe of Raif Badawi, who fully understood the risk he was taking but was prepared to ignore the danger in order to write something he felt was more important than his personal wellbeing.
As a fellow writer, I felt compelled to show my support by writing this blog. He should be freed and allowed to travel abroad but of course that would allow him to continue his criticism so the Saudi government is not in favour of such a solution. We have to show the Saudi government they would be better off receiving criticism from one person abroad rather than global condemnation by the rest of us.
Please provide your support to Amnesty who have an online petition you can quickly join and if you don’t know Raif’s story then I encourage you to find out more about this remarkable man.
