Saudis incredibly brutal in repressing opposition: Analyst
Press TV has conducted an interview with Kevin Barrett, editor of Veterans Today in Madison, and Lawrence J. Korb, US foreign policy and national security analyst in Washington, about the death sentences issued by the Saudi regime against 14 people after convicting them of attacks on police in the Shia- populated area of Qatif in Eastern Province.
Barrett says Saudi Arabia is very “vulnerable” to those people who are aware that they are being misruled, adding that the regime in Riyadh is “incredibly brutal” in its repression of any kind of opposition.
He also mentions the Saudi regime would never have lasted very long if the Western powers did not constantly prop it up.
“So we here have a case of extreme hypocrisy. The West pretends to stand for human rights, democracy. These are the values that we are supposedly fighting for all over the world but in the Islamic world the West is propping up this most brutal regime,” he states.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Barrett notes that the Sunni-Shia divide has been artificially manufactured by the Saudis.
“The Saudis began spending billions of dollars on public relations propaganda ... to try to stoke sectarian hatred in the Islamic world. It is one of the biggest propaganda operations in history,” he says.
The analyst argues as long as the Saudis spend petrodollars, they would be allowed to run rampant all over their own people and the people of the Middle East.
Korb, for his part, believes the whole question of the Sunni-Shia divide is something that the people in the Middle East really need to begin to work out among themselves.
However, he thinks, in terms of executing people, the Saudis do not seem to distinguish between the sects.
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