Since a while , this hashtag is added to the usual ones, #Free Raif, #Blogging Is Not A Crime, and #The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword” .
This last one, “The Pen is Mightier than the Sword” is in the Qur’an.
It is an answer to King Salman, the Prince of Saudi Arabia,who jailed Raif Badawi for his ideas on Islam.
It is now five years that Raif Badawi is imprisoned for his liberal ideas, and sentenced to flogging every Friday.
As his wife moved to Canada, she regularly urges the Canadian authorities to intervene towards the Saudi ones in favor of her husband.
https://www.amnesty.ca/sites/amnesty/files/PM%20Trudeau%20Open%20Letter%20on%20Raif%20Badawi.pdf
On social networks, especially Twitter, human rights activists urge Prince Salman to free Raif Badawi, for the sentence is not founded: freedom of speech is a human right.Furthermore, it is so cruel that the flogging is abolished some Friday , not to kill Raif Badawi.
He is now worldwide known, and received in 2015 the Sakharov Award of Free Speech.
As a supplementary argument towards the Saudi government, he is separated of his children, and his son expressed publicly his will to be reunited with his father.
At a time when the USA sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, and make of the country an example of progress in the Middle-East, because of the success of the”Women Drive”, it is necessary to recall that free speech does not exist in the Kingdom.
If Raif Badawi is not released , despite petitions in his favor,
https://www.change.org/p/lib%C3%A9rez-le-blogueur-saoudien-raif-badawi
and demonstrations worldwide,
nobody can call Saudi Arabia a country of progress .
To sum up, I will take a stand , too, in favor of Raif Badawi, and urge King Salman to grant him, not of a royal pardon, for he is innocent, but of a royal progress: free speech, as in this verse of the Qur’an.
Blogging is not a crime: free Raif Badawi,