Saudi Arabia expressed \u201cregret and pain\u201d over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and asserted its commitment to achieving the \u201chighest possible standards\u201d in human rights in the country as it was grilled by countries at the United Nations on Monday over the brutal murder.<\/p>\n
The public debate at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva came just over a month after the royal insider-turned-critic was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.<\/p>\n
Confirming that an investigation is still on-going into the death of Khashoggi, who was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, President of Saudi Arabia\u2019s Human Rights Commission Bandar bin Mohammed Al-Aiban during a scheduled review session told member states that King Salman bin Abdulaziz had personally initiated the probe.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has already expressed its regret and pain for the death of Jamil Khashoggi,\u201d Al-Aiban said. \u201cKing Abdel-Aziz has already instructed the prosecution to proceed with the investigation into this case according to the applicable laws and preparation to reaching all facts and bringing all the perpetrators to justice in order to bear the facts to the public.\u201d Following Al-Aiban\u2019s comments, 40 Member States appealed to Saudi Arabia to find out what had happened to Khashoggi, many also calling for reform to the Kingdom\u2019s freedom of expression laws.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia is facing a torrent of international condemnation over the killing of Khashoggi.<\/p>\n
Al-Aiban\u2019s comments came as a Turkish official charged Monday that Saudi Arabia had sent experts to Turkey to cover up the journalist\u2019s murder before allowing Turkish police in to search the consulate.<\/p>\n
During the review session, around 10 countries also expressed concern about the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has faced criticism for coordinating air strikes which have killed civilians.<\/p>\n
On the issue of Yemen, Al-Aiban insisted that Saudi Arabia \u201caffirms its continuous support for the Yemeni people and their legitimate government\u201d, which had requested assistance against Houthi attackers in 2015.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Coalition forces are doing their best to spare civilians, particularly women and children, civilian sites, and infrastructure as a side-effect of the armed conflict,\u201d Al-Aiban said, adding that Saudi communities near the border with Yemen continue to come under attack from the rebel Houthi movement\u2019s militia.<\/p>\n
Amid concerns over freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi representative insisted that it was a \u201cguaranteed right\u201d, before noting the launch of \u201cmany multilingual television and radio channels\u201d as evidence of people\u2019s right to express their opinions.<\/p>\n
The issue was picked up by many Member States, including Denmark, France, Germany and the United States, which although it is not a current member of the Human Rights Council, is permitted as a UN Member State to attend Universal Periodic Review (UPR) discussions. Specifically, it urged Saudi Arabia to more clearly define what constituted terrorism in law, so as not to criminalize expression, association or peaceful assembly.<\/p>\n
Another non-Council member, Russia, meanwhile, echoed other countries\u2019 comments that welcomed Saudi efforts to increase women\u2019s participation in social and political life, before expressing concern about possible violations of religious minorities, prisoners and detainees, amid reports of alleged torture in detention centres – and of migrant workers, who make up one-third of Saudi\u2019s population.<\/p>\n
In addition to many calls for the abolition of the death penalty amid concerns that its use is increasing in Saudi Arabia, Member States present also urged the kingdom to banish the practice of male guardianship of adult women.<\/p>\n
Reforms of the practice had only been put in place \u201cpartially\u201d, Switzerland\u2019s delegation said, and in most cases the discrimination against women \u201cpersists\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saudi Arabia expressed \u201cregret and pain\u201d over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and asserted its commitment to achieving the \u201chighest possible standards\u201d in human rights in the country as it was grilled by countries at the United Nations on Monday over the brutal murder. The public debate at the UN Human Rights Council in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46544,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46545,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46543\/revisions\/46545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}