Saudi Arabia should free Raif Badawi; we urge readers to support a message calling for his release
With rights come responsibilities and with freedom of speech and freedom of expression comes a responsibility to avoid making hateful and false comments. The blogger Raif Badawi is a man who understood that but shockingly in Saudi Arabia, simply for blogging about human rights he was sentenced to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes in 2014.
The only “crime” committed by Badawi, in reality, was to enable social debate online. In any other domain, this would be regarded as something to be lauded and though Saudi Arabia has rejected international condemnation of criticism of its treatment of this 32-year old as “interference in its internal affairs”, we join those speaking out against this unnecessarily harsh sentence.
Today, at 12 noon EST, a one-time message will be released on social media calling on Saudi Arabia to “do the right thing” and “release the imprisoned blogger Raif Badawi to his family in Canada”.
We urge all our readers to support this campaign by clicking here.
#BackLash #FreeRaif #JeSusisRaif
