By Robert Laurie —— Bio and Archives May 21, 2015
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Saudi Arabia is making a bid to head the United Nations’ Human Rights Council (HRC) just days after it posted a slew of new job openings for executioners who would help carry out beheadings amid a massive uptick in state-sanctioned killings in the country. Saudi Arabia, which has come under increasing criticism from human rights groups for an uptick in the number of executions in the country, has been a member of the U.N.’s top human rights body since 2014, along with Russia, China, and Cuba.
The presidency will then rotate to a member of the U.N.’s Asian bloc, which includes Bangladesh, China, the United Arab Emirates, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, the Maldives, Pakistan, South Korea, Qatar, and Vietnam. Human rights experts say that Saudi Arabia is not fit to lead the body, particularly amid a rise in executions under the newly crowned King Salman.Given that Saudi Arabia is fond of beheading criminals, flogging writers, and discriminating - severely - against women, we'd say "not fit" is a bit of an understatement. After all, this is a country that routinely kills, imprisons, tortures, and chemically castrates gays. ...And despite all this, they're already a Human Rights Council member nation. Oh, and they've been executing so many people that they've found themselves in the midst of an executioner shortage. So if you know of anyone looking for work....
On Monday, Saudi Arabia put out advertisements seeking eight new state executioners. These individuals would be responsible for beheading criminals and “performing amputations for those convicted of lesser crimes,” according to Fox News. David Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and lead author of recent report on Saudi human rights abuses, said the autocratic nation would make of mockery of the HRC.Of course, that's just it. There's no way to make a mockery of something that's already this big of a joke. The fact that the UN allows the existence of the HRC under its umbrella is already a piece of Kafkaesque absurdity. That the Saudis want to run it? Sauce for the goose.
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