Politics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people interested in governments, policies, and political processes. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
In 2021, Saudi Arabia announced that Mustafa al-Darwish had been executed. He was arrested in 2015, and many of the offenses he was charged with occurred when he was 17 years old; see here and here.
Has President Biden spoken about this event? Did he comment on other, similar events (human right issues) prior to the election? Are there differences between positions he has taken in the past and more recent statements?
Here is an article on the Washington Post titled "Joe Biden is making clear that Saudi human rights violations won’t be ignored", and "Biden is trying to strike a balance between promoting human rights and American interests." under the title.
In a recent call with the Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, President Biden struck a tone seldom witnessed in U.S.-Saudi diplomatic dialogue: one of subtle confrontation. During the conversation, Biden “affirmed the importance the United States places on universal human rights and the rule of law” in the wake of an intelligence report directly implicating Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman in the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
This recalibration of the U.S.-Saudi relationship marks a sharp break from Donald Trump’s deference toward Saudi Arabia. Even so Biden is taking no direct-action against bin Salman, which has fueled a variety of objections from everyone from Congressional Democrats to exiled Saudi dissidents, like Madawi al-Rasheed. And this is not the first time human rights have been subordinated to safeguarding the American partnership with the Saudis. Despite these objections, Biden is making clear that the U.S. should have both a strategic partnership with the Saudis and work toward human rights. While this position is rare, and it often does not go far enough, it is needed to better match U.S. human rights rhetoric to reality.
