CD (Portland) — US progressives in recent days have renewed efforts to push President Joe Biden and Congress to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its atrocities, including war crimes in Yemen and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Last week, the Biden administration angered human rights defenders by seeking sovereign immunity status for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—commonly called by his initials, MBS—in a lawsuit over the 2018 kidnapping and brutal murder of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist with permanent residency in the United States.

Activists were already infuriated with Biden for “letting MBS get away with the murder,” as one writer put it, and for his summer summit and infamous fist bump with the crown prince, as well as for continuing to support the Saudi-led war in Yemen after initially imposing a temporary freeze on arms sales.

“President Biden vowed to hold accountable Saudi ruler MBS for Khashoggi’s murder by making him a ‘pariah,’ and Congress should help Biden keep his word by passing a War Powers Resolution that cuts off US support for the Saudi war in Yemen,” David Segal, executive director of the activist group Demand Progress, said in a statement yesterday.

“Saudi Arabia is controlled by an outlaw regime, as demonstrated by the murder of a US-based journalist and by deliberately holding down oil production to support Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine,” Segal added. “The United States should no longer prop up that regime’s unconscionable war in Yemen that killed nearly 400,000 people, including untold children.”

A Saudi-led blockade has exacerbated starvation and disease in Yemen. Of Yemen’s approximately 30 million people, more than 23 million required some form of assistance in 2022, according to United Nations humanitarian officials.

In June, 48 US lawmakers from the House of Representatives introduced a War Powers Resolution to end the nation’s unauthorized involvement in the Saudi-led war. The following month, senators Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, and Elizabeth Warren proposed a similar measure in the upper chamber.

Representative Ilhan Omar—one of the 48 co-sponsors of the House resolution—explained in an interview with The Intercept that “our foreign policy should not be based on a dependence on oil or the geopolitical whims of foreign despots. It should be based on the rule of law and human rights.”

Omar and Representative Joaquin Castro headlined a letter signed last week by thirteen House Democrats to Secretary of State Antony Blinken “to express our strong support for the United States to use its influence at the United Nations Human Rights Council to work towards the establishment of an independent, international investigative mechanism on Yemen at the earliest opportunity.”

“This new mechanism should have the authority to collect and preserve evidence of violations for future consideration, by competent judicial authorities, of possible crimes committed by all parties to the conflict,” the lawmakers added. “Having an international mechanism would play a crucial role in ensuring accountability for the atrocities that have taken place for more than a decade in Yemen.”

Omar contended that “true peace demands justice” and that “international institutions have a responsibility to account for any and all atrocities that took place in Yemen, and the United States has a responsibility to advocate for them.”

“Truly centering human rights and a rules-based order in our foreign policy,” she added, “requires full accountability when those rights are violated.”

Joey Shea, a researcher on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for Human Rights Watch, noted this week that after Biden met with MBS in July, there followed “an uptick in serious violations of human rights by Saudi authorities.”

“In August, a Saudi appeals court dramatically increased the prison sentence of Saudi doctoral student Salma al-Shehab from six years to 34 years, based solely on her Twitter activity,” she continued. “Other people—including at least one US citizen—critical of the Saudi government on social media have received extreme prison sentences from Saudi courts.”

“Biden’s campaign promise to make Saudi authorities ‘pay the price’ for Khashoggi’s heinous murder has not been met,” Shea added. “Absent real sanctions against the Saudi government for its transnational repression, MBS will read US policy as a ‘green light’ to continue committing abuses at home and abroad while enjoying generous US military, diplomatic, and political support.”

Originally published at Common Dreams. Republished by cc by-sa 3.0. Minor edits for style and content.

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