This month, Saudi Arabia’s oil company, Aramco, revealed that it generated $111.1 billion in net income last year, making it the world’s most profitable company by far. So it is not particularly surprising that a scant six months after the killing and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by government goons stunned the world, businesses and banks are once again courting the kingdom.
Hundreds of investors lined up this month to bid in Aramco’s first bond sale; among businesses humming in the kingdom, movie theater giant AMC is moving ahead with plans for 40 new theaters, and Google is working on a data center. “The fact that there are issues in the press does not tell me I must run away from a place. In many cases it tells me I should run to and invest because what we are most frightened of are things that we don’t talk about,” explained Larry Fink, the BlackRock chief executive, who created waves this year when he argued that business must provide leadership on social and political issues.
Fink’s statement appeared to be a variation on what many other corporate barons have used as justification for working with the de facto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — that they are helping Saudis to reform and modernize their society. In that context, it might be instructive to revisit some of the “issues in the press.”
Let us set aside for the moment the strong indications provided by U.S. and Turkish intelligence that Prince Mohammed was behind Khashoggi’s murder, which he denies. The purported modernization decreed by the prince has been accompanied by a broad campaign of arrests, trials, convictions and executions.
On Tuesday, the official Saudi news agency announced that 37 men, nearly all from the minority Shiite Muslim community, had been executed on terrorism-related charges. Executions in Saudi Arabia are usually by beheading, often in public, and the Interior Ministry said one man was also crucified, something reserved for the most grievous crimes.
According to Human Rights Watch, 11 of the men were charged with spying for Iran and 14 in connection with protests during the Arab Spring of 2011. Some of the convictions were based on confessions that the men withdrew in court, saying they had been tortured. One of those beheaded was Mujtaba al-Sweikat, who was 17 and preparing to enter Western Michigan University when he was arrested in 2012 after attending a pro-democracy rally.
The most-heralded evidence of modernization under Prince Mohammed was his lifting of a ban on women driving. The very fact that there was such a ban is ridiculous, but a few weeks before it was ended, in May 2018, several women’s rights activists were rounded up — including women who had campaigned against the driving ban — and accused of crimes against the kingdom.
According to human rights organizations and their families, at least some of the women were tortured. The techniques included beatings, electric shocks, whipping and waterboarding. The parents of Loujain al-Hathloul said after a visit that her thighs were black with bruises, and she was shaking uncontrollably, unable to sit or walk normally. Several of the women reportedly went on trial in March, but the charges were not specified, and reporters and diplomats were barred from the courtroom. Several other women remain in prison, including Samar Badawi, whose case ignited a major diplomatic row between Canada and Saudi Arabia after Canada requested her immediate release.
None of these human-rights violations have put a dent in the strong support Prince Mohammed enjoys from President Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Kushner in particular has been ardently cultivating the prince’s friendship to win support for a long-promised Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. Last week, Trump cast only his second veto against a bipartisan resolution that would have forced an end to U.S. military involvement with Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen’s civil war, which has contributed to appalling civilian suffering.
Yes, Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally, and it is a fountain of petrodollars. But Prince Mohammed needs Washington’s arms and global business investment at least as much as it needs his money or oil. Demanding a modicum of civilized behavior must be a nonnegotiable part of any deal.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.