In the series Peaky Blinders season 6, episode two, Tommy Shelby tells Laura McKee “in the Shelby family business comes before issues of vengeance.”
About a week ago, Saudi Arabia executed 81 people in one day, most of them believed to be Shia people and/or opposers to the Saudi regime, including seven Yemenis and one Syrian national, on charges including “allegiance to foreign terrorist organizations” and holding “deviant beliefs”.
Since then, I’ve waited to see a single action done by western democracies and those regimes who claim to be concerned about human rights. Not a single useful action were done. I guess business comes before issues of human rights in freedom and human rights fighter regimes.
Few kilometers away from Saudi, Iran is under heavy sanctions for what is claimed to be human rights concerns over its reputation of human rights violation and nuclear program. Now I’m not against forcing a regime to respect humans but it’s the double standards the western countries have that annoys me.
Saudi is a key partner of United States and some European regimes in the region and keeping it happy benefits many countries who need Middle East oil to survive. With Iran under sanctions and other Arab countries under the influence of Saudi, it’s best to keep Salman of Arabia happy.
Same went when Jamal Khashoggi was killed in Saudi’s embassy in Turkey. Nothing happened. No sanction, no relation cut, no powerful action, absolute nothing but some useless statements and waste of paper.
Perhaps western countries’ leaders love to watch Peaky Blinders and have much to learn of it, specially when Tommy teaches them business can come before humans.