British Rights Groups Call on PM to Cancel Saudi Crown Prince Visit UK

TEHRAN (defapress)- British rights organisations called on the government to cancel the visit of the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, to Britain, which was announced by the UK’s Prime Minister, Theresa May, last month.

News ID: 68116

Date: 16 January 2018 - 15:30

In a joint letter that was submitted yesterday to May’s office, the organisations said “The Saudi Crown Prince is responsible for the crimes committed in his country against activists, including prison, detention, torture, forced disappearance and execution,” Middle East Monitor reported.

“He [Saudi Crown Prince] is also responsible for the serious war crimes in Yemen which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people, including women and children,” the letter read.

The rights activists also slammed the British government’s defense and arms support to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, which they believed was the major reason for the escalation in Yemen.

“The Saudi regime intervenes in other countries’ internal affairs, such as in Bahrain, where they help the regime there to suppress the activists,” the letter stated.

“It [Saudi regime] also imposed the blockade on Qatar, which violates all international conventions, and detained the Lebanese Prime Minister in an effort to impose conditions on other states,” the activists noted.

“Bin Salman’s visit to Britain is a disgrace to the UK,” the letter’s signatories stressed, warning that “the interests and values of the British people contradict with this visit.”

The letter was reported to have been signed by the Stop the War coalition, the Stop Arming Saudi group, the Arab Organization for Human Rights in UK, and the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.

Moreover, the rights groups launched a campaign against the visit on the UK government’s official website with the aim to collect “as much signatures against the visit as possible.”

May visited Saudi Arabia twice last year, the first was in April and the other was in November, during which she met the Saudi King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz and held talks with the Crown Prince and the Saudi Minister of Defence.