Ireland must cut links with despotic Saudi regime says Ryan

The Workers’ Party has called on the Irish Government to bring to an end its close business and political links with a regime in Saudi Arabia which has condemned a young political activist to death by crucifixion and is a systematic extreme abuser of human rights.

Workers’ Party Dublin City Councillor, Éilis Ryan, said: “Recent Irish Governments whether they include Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Labour or the Greens have gleefully paraded our growing trade links with Saudi Arabia which is ruled by the despotic House of Saud”.

“This is a regime which has killed over 175 people in the past 12 months by beheading; many condemned to die on flimsy evidence or for non-existent crimes including ‘witchcraft’. A regime that bases its laws on an extremist ideology which denies minorities and women basic human rights; a regime which lends material support to terrorist groups across the Middle East and beyond.”

Ryan added: “Yet Saudi Arabia is a state that the Irish Government has designated as a ‘priority market’ and one which it intends to develop greater business links with. The regime is one that the Taoiseach Enda Kenny and a bevy of ministers glad-handed with last year during a visit to Saudi Arabia. The Government has even funded the establishment of the Irish-Saudi Arabia Business Council, an organisation which has no concern for the gross, systematic and extreme human rights abuses of the people they work with”.

“The Saudi regime has now stated its intention to crucify, then behead a young political activist, Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, in the coming days. His alleged crime, which he was arrested for when he was a 17 year old, is that he opposes the despotic rule of the House of Saud but in reality he is condemned to die because he is from a politically active family within the country’s Shia religious minority.

“The Irish Government must treat this horrific situation as a wake-up call and immediately cut all ties with the House of Saud, a regime which breeds sectarian hatred and is a systemic human rights abuser of the most extreme kind.”