A political activist and refugee fate are tragedy

A political activist and refugee fate are tragedy


A Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has been missing for just over two weeks and his destiny has engaged the world around. Media has reported intensively about the case and directed against criticisms of the rulers in Saudi Arabia. Media-wide reporting came as a very positive surprise. It is not every day media reports about the persecution of individual refugees and activists.



Everyone remembers Ahmadreza Djalali, the researcher at Karolinska institute accused of the Iran regime for espionage for Sweden and sentenced to death. What happened to him? Nobody knows. Media has not reported anything about his case for a very long time. Several Iranian refugees have been murdered by the regime's death squads over the years without the media being aware of it. Two months ago, the Iranian regime shot several missiles against the opposition facilities in Kurdistan and killed many activists. Media showed no interest at the time either.

The fact that the Saudi journalist has received so much attention may be due to the fact that there are so few exile studies. There is a saying that sounds "one's death is tragedy, one million dead is just statistics."

Jamal Khashoggi's fate as the only refugee from Saudi Arabia is a tragedy, while refugees and activists from other countries are in millions and are just statistics. Could it be so established media reasoning? Or are there any other explanations?

Tuesday 16th of October had a long feature of Jamal Khashoggi's fate. Between the East Sensor Aron Lund from the Foreign Policy Institute, he participated in the studio and SVT's foreign correspondent participated in a video link. It was all round to say that "Iran is more democratic than Saudi Arabia" and criticize Donald Trump for imposing sanctions on Iran instead of Saudi Arabia.

Of course, there is freedom of the press in Sweden and SVT can report what it wants and call the century's worst crime for relative democracy. But that the fundamentalist regime in Iran should be "more democratic" than Saudi Arabia or any other country is nothing but a pathetic lie. Here are some quick facts about it, according to SVT "more democratic" Iran.

The regime in Iran executes most of the world in proportion to population size.

The regime in Iran executes most of the minors in the world.

The regime in Iran captures most journalists in the world.

The regime in Iran has executed 120,000 political prisoners.

The regime in Iran has executed thousands of Baha'i, Christians and Jews.

The regime in Iran is one of the most corrupt in the world, according to Transparency International

During the Islamic regime, about 30 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

In Sweden, about one hundred thousand inhabitants live. Everyone has evaded economic, political, religious or ethnic oppression and has come to Sweden as refugees. Even today thousands of iranians seek asylum in Sweden every year. However, the number of asylum seekers from Saudi Arabia is zero.

I have never been to Saudi Arabia and can not very much about the country. But I can say with confidence that Iran is not "more democratic" than Saudi Arabia or any other country.

However, the regime in Iran is good at import. The regime imports thousands of Swedish trucks. The Iranian regime is a major customer for Swedish trucks than all other countries in the region together. But I do not think SVT and the foreign policy institute use trucks as a democracy indicator, but that would not be serious. You can not measure democracy with the number of trucks sold

How to measure democracy and with what indicators, SVT likes to explain.