Irony of the month: Norway accused by Saudi Arabia of human rights violations

May 2, 2014 • 5:44 am

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Saudi Arabia has one of the world’s worst human rights records. Homosexuality is illegal; they still execute people by beheading them, as well as stoning them, amputating limbs, and lashing them; they practice sharia law in which a woman’s testimony in court is worth half as much as a man’s; women aren’t allowed to drive, and so on.

There’s more. Wikipedia notes this:

Serious criminal offences [in Saudi Arabia] include not only internationally recognized crimes such as murder, rape, theft and robbery, but also apostasy, adultery, witchcraft and sorcery. In addition to the regular police force, Saudi Arabia has a secret police, the Mabahith, and “religious” police, the Mutawa. The latter enforces Islamic social and moral norms. Western-based human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have criticized the activities of both the Mabahith and the Mutawa, as well as a number of other aspects of human rights in Saudi Arabia. These include the number of executions, the range of offences which are subject to the death penalty, the lack of safeguards for the accused in the criminal justice system, the treatment of homosexuals, the use of torture, the lack of religious freedom, and the highly disadvantaged position of women. The Albert Shanker Institute and Freedom House have also reported that “Saudi Arabia’s practices diverge from the concept of the rule of law.”

And this is a U.S. ally!

It’s deeply ironic, then, that Saudi Arabia has criticized Norway, of all countries, for that nation’s violations of human rights. As The Independent reports:

Saudi Arabia has criticised Norway’s human rights record, accusing the country of failing to protect its Muslim citizens and not doing enough to counter criticism of the prophet Mohammed.

The gulf state called for all criticism of religion and of prophet Mohammed to be made illegal  in Norway. It also expressed concern at “increasing cases of domestic violence, rape crimes and inequality in riches” and noted a continuation of hate crimes against Muslims in the country.

The Scandinavian nation came under scrutiny during the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review, in which 14 States are scheduled to have their human rights records examined.

Russia meanwhile called for Norway to clamp down on expressions of religious intolerance and  and criticised the country’s child welfare system. They also recommended that Norway improve its correctional facilities for those applying for asylum status.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende was in Geneva to hear the concerns from 91 other countries. He told Norway’s NTB newswire prior to the hearing: “It is a paradox that countries which do not support fundamental human rights have influence on the council, but that is the United Nations,” reported The Local.

Curious, isn’t it, that Saudi Arabia is most concerned with criticism of Islam as the most pressing “human rights”? In fact, the United Nations has been trying for a while, unsuccessfully, to get “freedom from criticism of religion” incorporated as one of the fundamental humans rights to be adopted by their member states. And of course that provision is backed largely by Muslim nations.

Talk about a beam in the eye! Which country’s political system would you rather live under: Norway’s or Saudi Arabia? Now I’m not deeply acquainted with Norway’s other “violations” of human rights (criticism of religion doesn’t count; tolerating hate crimes does), but I’d bet a large amount of money that at least half the population of Saudi Arabia—the half with two X chromosomes—would do better living in Norway.

Of course somewhere on the Internet there’s someone who will make the case that Norway’s trespasses are far more egregious (there is no argument so stupid that it doesn’t appear on the Web), but I hope they’re not on this site!

h/t: Grania

 

72 thoughts on “Irony of the month: Norway accused by Saudi Arabia of human rights violations”

  1. I saw that too and thought it must be from the Onion. Interesting to note Russia chiming in with criticism of Norway’s “expressions of religious intolerance” (by which they presumably mean any criticism of religion). The Russian state’s embrace of the loathsomely reactionary Orthodox Church gets ever tighter …

    1. “Russia meanwhile called for Norway to clamp down on expressions of religious intolerance”. Do they mean clamping down in the same way that political criticism is clamped down on in Russia, or that political freedom and national sovereignty is currently being clamped down on in Ukraine?

      Russia only embraces the Orthodox Church because they see it as another tool of control and indoctrination.

  2. The last time Norway executed anybody, by any means, for any reason was in 1948. As a Norwegian friend of mine commented on exactly the same topic: “kind of went out of fashion”.

    1. Fairly recent nonetheless. I was surprised when checking last execution dates on how recently they were carried out in many European states. France in 1977 by guillotine is particularly disturbing.

      1. The execution was, of course, as a result of WW2 and I cannot say that the circumstances were under any stretch of the imagination “normal”. To be fair to the Norwegians, the last peacetime execution was way back in 1876.

  3. >>The gulf state called for all criticism of religion and of prophet Mohammed to be made illegal in Norway. It also expressed concern at “increasing cases of domestic violence, rape crimes and inequality in riches” and noted a continuation of hate crimes against Muslims in the country.

    Said by a government which does not allow non-muslims to practice their own faiths. When was the last time a church or synagogue was opened in Saudi-Arabia?

      1. Yes, because the Norwegian government has carefully managed its revenue from oil drilling for the benefit of the whole country (née one of the poorest in Europe) rather than squandering it on a handful of princes… There’s definitely something unequal about that.

        /@

    2. Speaking of rape and domestic violence, I seem to have forgotten something important.

      Of these two countries- Norway and Saudi Arabia- in which one is “being raped” a de-facto capital crime? In which one is a conviction for rape impossible except with the testimony of multiple male witnesses? In which one is “beating your wife” considered not only a husband’s right, but his sacred duty?

  4. “Pot calling the kettle black”? Sorry – you’ve got that badly wrong; pot calling the bone china teaset black, more like it!

    2. Beat me to it too. This was precisely the comment I was going to make.

      It’s a Theater of the Absurd. Orwell was right that an inversion of all meaning is a key tool and aspect of evil.

  5. “The gulf state called for all criticism of religion and of prophet Mohammed to be made illegal in Norway”

    Bwaaaaha..ha..ha ha…hee, hee, haw, haw..ha..ha….*gasps for air*…ho ho, har, har…*gasps*….

    Wait. Saudi Arabia, you were serious?

    Oh, sorry, we don’t do that here.

    Vaal

    1. Qualification is necessary here. While it’s (obviously) very difficult to get data on what is going on in the mind of a decapitated person, there is evidence that death isn’t instantaneous, and one can only imagine how unpleasant it must be for the victim in whatever time they remain conscious after the blade drops. Particularly as evidence from botched decapitations (again, for obvious reasons, anecdotal) suggests that having a great huge blade slice through one’s neck is inordinately painful, even when it’s competently done.

      1. This is, of course, why France used the guillotine. If you’re going to cut someone’s head off, that’s probably the most reliable and foolproof way of doing it. (Not that I favour the death penalty!)

        1. The guillotine was perfected during the French Revolution but it took some doing & there were lots of botched executions up until then.

          1. Okay I wasn’t aware of that. The development process I mean. I read somewhere that it was originally intended as a humane killer for sheep. Evidently the animal testing was not extensive enough.

            (Sorry, I sometimes lapse into black humour).

            Getting back to the original point, what do Saudi’s executioners practise on?

          3. That’s all right then. Everybody knows atheists don’t matter.

  7. Norway should file this under the “Oh that’s rich” category.

  8. Yeah, I saw this the other day. It did make me chuckle. I sent the link to a friend with the comment “More like the Pot calling the brand new, shiny, stainless steel frying pan black.” The International Human Rights Rank Indicator places Norway 1st, Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is ranked 205th. That says it all really.

    1. Wow, this is really rich.
      It seems the Krazy KleriKs™ get batshittier by the day.

      1. Ha! That’s hilarious. Seeing that we’re all such big Jesus fans around here it’s probably worth remembering his comments about sins and stone throwers. 🙂

        1. I didn’t think to look up the rest, so your list is interesting. No suprise to see Scandanavians clustered around the top spot. Personally, I’m quite pleased to be 12th, not bad.

          2. Oh that is hilarious. Thanks for the link. I’m surprised Germany (18th) and France (19th) aren’t higher. I was also very surprised that Japan was all the way down at 86th. But there are some clear highlights: Vatican City 27th (hilarious) and Saudi Arabia is only one position higher than North Korea! Yep, they should defintiely keep their comments about Norway to themselves methinks.

          3. Some of the scores are quite puzzling. Japan on 48 per cent, China on 53 per cent – how come? I know a small number of Falun Gong practitioners from mainland China and Hong Kong whose stories of persecution and corruption, consistent with other evidence from non-practitioners, make me a bit sceptical.

    1. Criticism of religion, and all belief systems, must always be permissible. Maybe it should be mandatory: no breakfast until you say something critical about one of the frauds called prophets!

  11. A book documenting Norway’s real (not imagined) Human Rights violations would probably qualify as one of the shortest in the world.

    I doubt there’s enough paper on the planet to chronicle Saudi Arabia’s violations.

    Mike.

      1. Great scene! Isn’t she the same little old lady who translates the Ebonics?

      1. Some of the “good” countries did surprisingly bad things not that long ago. In the 1950s in the Netherlands, for example, children whose mothers were German and fathers Dutch (apparently much more common than the other way around and in either case should be seen as a contribution to normalization of relations (dare I say “foreign affairs”) after WWII) were not allowed to participate in celebrations on national holidays. Rather, they had to stay in school and write over and over “I am not allowed to participate since my mother is German”.

        Things have changed, though, and my feeling now is that if I move out of Germany, it will probably be to the Netherlands. (I used to toy with the idea of moving to Scandinavia, but there prude sexual morality (really!) has put me off.)

        1. Really not so surprising about the sex-bias in post-War II intermarriage — war casualties in Germany meant that there were many more young women than young men around in the late 40s/early 50s. And displacement camps dispersed many German and German-speaking civilians all over western Europe.

          The Dutch certainly suffered, but apart from the few who volunteered for the eastern front, I’d imagine that war losses didn’t result in a skewed sex ratio.

      2. Remember that Abba’s Frida moved from Norway to Sweden as a child because of the hate against her as the child of a German soldier.

        As stupid as Paul Simon, as a juror at an international youth talent competition in the early 1970s, saying, before he had even heard the song, that he couldn’t vote for Germany because of the Holocaust. What he did know was that the candidate was born after the war (because they were all young). (And even if she had been born before, that doesn’t automatically make her guilty. Remember, his comment was made without knowing who she was.)

        The candidate, Marianne Rosenberg, has been a successful singer in Germany for decades. Irony: Almost her entire family was killed in the Holocaust and her sister was the president of the organization for Sinti and Roma in Germany.

  14. I suggest an amicable compromise: Norway makes criticism of Islam and Mohammed illegal, Saudi Arabia allows construction of a temple to Odin and Thor in downtown Mecca. What could be fairer than that?

    But really, the litany of muslim complaints is just getting beyond parody now. You really couldn’t make this stuff up. And I think the question of “Which country’s political system would you rather live under?” is answered by the hundreds of thousands of people from muslim-majority countries who have emigrated, or are actively trying to emigrate, to the West. In contrast, precisely no-one goes in the opposite direction. The real puzzle is why such a vociferous minority of muslims in the West seem determined to turn their new home countries into replicas of the intolerant, brutal hellholes they or their parents sweated blood to escape from.

    1. Well, possibly the majority are not so determined, but elders come along after them and say, you must adhere to the old ways, don’t be seduced by the free-thinking ways of these wicked occidentals!

      /@

      1. “wicked occidentals”.
        Yes. Sounds like the sort of villains you’d find in 21st-century mirror-version of Sax Rohmer’s insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu pulp novels. Working their inscrutable evil upon innocent non-Westerners.
        There’s a niche market there, I’m sure of it.

  15. The UN for some time has advocated “freedom from criticism of religion” as a fundamental human right.

    Fucking fabulous proposal. What could possibly go wrong if this is ever incorporated into the UN Charter?

    Is there any nation on the planet which currently prohibits criticism of religion that is not a totalitarian theocracy?

    Nations with economic policy structure that tends to limit privation at the lowest societal levels experience the least intrusion into secular democracy by extremist religious beliefs.

    As income disparity increases in societies, so increases the rate and intensity of religious fervor.

    Economic-resource deprivation in coming decades increasingly will become the norm planet-wide. Is intensified religiosity perhaps likely to result due to the terror of extreme want (is arsenic poisonous)?

    It is going to be difficult enough to preserve democracy during these closing days of the carbon industrial era. Eliminating freedom to publicly confront faith belief totalitarians is one of the worst ideas ever anytime, but particularly now.

    1. The UN does NOT advocate critisism of religion to be illegal. A group within the UN does. The Islamic group & the Catholic Church.

  16. It’s funny that these words come from a country that has declared all atheists to be terrorists…

  17. The sad thing is, a “peer review” of programs and problems like this to me makes sense. But the result of doing so is so off the wall sometimes … for example, for all I know, Norway could do better integrating religious or ethnic minorities. But the other stuff is so insane that it gets lost in the noise. What to do? I dunno, because I also don’t think that Norway (or anyone else) should have to spend time combing through the bull to get to the relevant stuff – if there is any.

  18. Saudi Arabia is one of the most backward countries on earth. In addition to the “qualities of life” mentioned in the preceding comments, the country, one might note, does allow Jewish visitors. Anyone who has ISRAEL stamped in a passport is barred.

  20. I believe it’s a fact that a large percentage of the offenders in the “rape-wave” happening in Scandinavia are Muslim immigrants.

      1. I’d believe “a strong majority”, but claims of “100%” go a bit too far.

        But please, remind me again: Of these two countries- Norway and Saudi Arabia- in which one is “being raped” a de-facto capital crime? In which one is a conviction for rape impossible except with the testimony of multiple male witnesses? In which one is “beating your wife” considered not only a husband’s right, but his sacred duty?

  21. Massive facepalm. I’ve written about the horrors of life under Saudi Arabian rule on a few occasions – stats, facts and stories to make the toes curl. But Norway?! Seriously, this is like Mike Tyson having a go at Robin Thicke for being misogynistic.

  22. The irony here is staggering on several levels, as theres is actually very little critisism of Islam here, it has become even more taboo after the terrorist attacks by that anti-islamic maniac in 2011. But even before that, the accusations of “islamophobia” and racism sat looser here than most places on earth. for instance, one of our more right-wing populist politicians (whom I usually disagree with) mentioned that some efforts to “integrate” muslims (like police women in headscarfs, prayer rooms in schools) was a form of “sneaky islamization” and she was just crucified by the media for suggesting that. Anyway, Saudia Arabia, like proper religious nutcases, have extreme persecution complexes and are not happy until their religion and their god has the power to supress and dominate all others for the rest of eternity.

    1. Let’s face it: police women in headscarfs and prayer rooms in schools are forms of “sneaky islamization”. The problem with Scandinavia today is that only right-wing politicians say this. The left-wing politicians in Scandinavia are the ones who, in decades gone by, fought for women’s rights, the secular society, and so on and now they are helping (mainly) Islamic immigrants to undo this progress.

  23. I’ve lived in Norway and still visit regularly. All I can say is whoever the dumbshit is who’s saying that stuff has never been to Norway. The muslims in Norway are free to do whatever they wish within the limits of the law. They’re not living scared and in general people don’t even poke fun at their prophet. You’ll get a few nasty people, but you get them anywhere on the planet. Unlike the USA (and Australia), there are no big campaigns to prevent them from building mosques and they’re not harassed.

  24. Norwegian politicians are, of course, forced to take the comments about our human rights from “those” countries somewhat seriously, but for the rest of us, it provided a good laugh 🙂

    Its hard to take something seriously when its so wildly inconsistent and far, far removed from reality (then again, those traits go hand in hand with religion, so its consistent in that way I guess)

  25. If any Americans want to check out how the evil, racist, intolerant and Islamophobic Norwegians treat foreigners and immigrants they might want to check out Little Stevens “Lillehammer” on Netflix, catch-up or on-demand TV (whatever).

    If I was a refugee, economic migrant or illegal immigrant the first place in Europe I would aim for would be Norway.

    Even the prison cells make US budget hotels look a bit rough and spartan.

    I lived in Saudi Arabia for eighteen months (it was like moving to the Middle Ages) and if I was offered the choice of there or Norway it would be a case of “Oslo here I come”.

    Unfortunately the extra factor of the stunningness of Norwegian women is trounced only by the fact that the winters are truly bloody freezing.

    Even then I would rather freeze my bollox off in Norway than sweat them off in Saudi Arabia.

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