#BTSpeakingOut – Yet another misstep by Government

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.

by Charles Cooke,  Toronto, Canada

Here we go AGAIN!

A few weeks ago, Minister of Tourism, Hon. Lisa Cummins, stated with breathless excitement that the Government will be forming alliances and linkages with Saudi Arabia.

It is well documented that in October 2018, Saudi Arabia sanctioned the murder dismemberment of one of its own citizens.

A couple of weeks ago they summarily executed 81 people in a single day (breaking their own sorry and despicable record) claiming some were “terrorists” and others held “deviant beliefs”. State television said the prisoners “followed the footsteps of Satan”.  There was hardly a peep out of the so-called mainstream media.

Foreign workers face abuse, torture and forced confessions in Saudi Arabia, according to reports by Human Rights Watch. Amnesty International has documented the atrocities perpetrated in the kingdom. They describe widespread abuses in Saudi detention facilities, including beatings and electrocutions. Detainees described being chained together in pairs and being forced to use cell floors as toilets. As many as 300 people are placed in a single cell.

Just ask the over 10 million poor migrant workers from countries such as Ethiopia, Indonesia, The Philippines, etc.  about the quality of their lives under an abusive kafala system which gives their employers excessive power over their physical mobility, legal status, etc. They have no recourse to justice for the abuses visited upon them. What other country demands this type of servitude? What type of country makes people surrender their travel documents
as a condition of work? Think about it!

All of this information is readily available to the Barbados government and the media yet the Barbados media are
giving the government and its ministers a free pass on this proposed alliance.

I simply cannot believe that the deeply religious society that is Barbados would condone such a moral failure in its leadership at the highest levels. At the various news conferences over the past year, the media have been a shocking embarrassment with all kinds of soft-ball questions lobbed to the government.

Journalists, do your job!

What is equally distressing is that the Barbados government is led mostly by women (Even our President is a woman!) – and some say that if the world were run by women it would be a far kinder and gentler place – which should give them pause in their dealings with a country known for its abhorrent and misogynistic treatment
of women.

Again, this is no secret and Barbados cannot appear to condone this type of behaviour. All of our excellent, smart, high-profile women would be nobodies in Saudi Arabia leerily valued only for their pulchritudinous assets.

Think about it!

They have oil and what else? A finite resource from which the world is turning. It is ironic that our PM is at the forefront of the climate change battle.

Hon. Minister Cummins, money is not everything and we should not sell our souls for it.

What would Barbados have to give up for any Saudi largesse? Vote with them at the UN? Abstain or vote against any resolutions they deem not to be in their best interests? Everything comes with a price, Hon. Minister.

It is quite amusing when the phrase that “Barbados is a friend of all and satellite of none” is trotted out to justify iffy foreign policy decisions. But that cleverly crafted slogan, a remnant of the cold war aimed at calming the fears of a small country embarking on a new journey together, is just as ineffective and irrelevant as another meaningless bromide “Barbados punching above its weight” in the halls of powerful international financiers and institutions.

To think that Barbados only recently extricated itself from British hegemony and one of the first things it does is to propose forming an alliance with a despicable theocracy. It is to weep.

The Barbados government rightly took a firm stand against Putin for the evil he is perpetrating in Ukraine and in the next breath is eager to shake hands with MBS who, for years, is waging, some may say, an even more despicable war in Yemen.

Putin poisons. MBS dismembers. What’s next? A giddy proclamation of an airlift agreement with Aeroflot?

Bajans, let us fulfill that timeless saying of ours when we see another foolishly heading in the wrong direction!

“Come back” we beseech thee!