By Aaron Miller-
Australia is helping a local company sell weapons systems destined for Saudi Arabia, it has been revealed The news coes whilst the Saudi government is still recovering from the international furore that accompanied the murder of Khashoggi at the Turkish Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. They are accused of indiscriminate airstrikes and military offensives that have killed thousands of civilians.
Private EOS board minutes revealing signatures of a Letter of Intent (LOI) for the sale of 500 remote weapons systems units for the Saudi Ministry of Interior were today released by journalists from ABC . They reveal deals that form part of a long decade plan to enrich Austalia, and make it one of the top countries for sale of defence exports. The fiancée of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi who paid a visit to the European Parliament today, called for sanctions to be placed on Saudi Arabia.
”Up until now, nothing has been done to those implicated in this crime,” Hatice Cengiz said in the European Parliament in Brussels on Tuesday.
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“Hasn’t the moment come? I ask this question as a simple human being.”
“I’m here not only as the fiancée of Jamal [Khashoggi] but also for the values he fought for, values he wanted for the people in his own country, the people of the Arab world,” Hatice Cengiz said during her visit to Brussel. However, when it comes to business, mot other considerations are forced to take a back seat in the reality of today’s world.
The Australian director of Human Rights Watch, Elaine Pearson, has called for the Government to be more transparent about sales to Saudi.
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“The Australian Government has been saying repeatedly: ‘Trust us, we’re abiding by the terms of the arms trade treaty, we’re abiding by our human rights obligations’,” Ms Pearson said. “But the reality is we simply don’t know because there is no transparency.
“I think we’d like to [have] a bit more transparency about what weapons have been provided to Saudi Arabia, the quantities of equipment and how do we know that those weapons are not ending up on the battlefield in Yemen.”
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Only last week the US House of Representatives voted to end American military assistance for Saudi Arabia and its allies fighting in Yemen. This was accompanied by a committee of the UK’s House of Lords who branded the British Government as being on the wrong side of the law by selling arms to Saudi Arabia.
Former military officer and defence analyst Rodger Shanahan said the Government should always weigh the risk of selling defence items overseas.
“When you’re exporting to an area — particularly (the) Middle East where there is a history of conflicts, and some of the nature of the conflicts can be quite murky — you have to be quite confident in yourself that materiel … that you export is not going to be used in conflicts where there might be some reputational damage suffered by Australian exporters,” he said.
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