Balanced judgment is needed on Saudis

RUSHING to pronounce judgement is never a good strategy.

Peter Sagar’s “I told you so” letter (June 23) on Saudi human rights is a case in point.

He highlights a single serious miscarriage of justice and what some might characterise as a piece of trivia relating to rainbow symbolism.

There is the evidence, he says. End of discussion. Nothing changes.

To be flippant for a moment, I could point to recent developments in relation to the Saudi war in Yemen as a counter example.

Have you noticed that things seem to have gone rather quiet on that front?

Well, shortly after the PFI takeover of Newcastle United a ceasefire came into force.

One might suggest the timing is coincidental but, as the Secretary General of the UN has highlighted, the warring parties should be praised for entering into meaningful negotiations.

Finally there seems to be a glimmer of light at the end of a very long tunnel.

It cannot be denied that miscarriages of justice happen daily across the globe and Saudi Arabia continues to figure prominently in that particular dossier of shame.

However, they are not alone. Just look at the USA - the scale of institutionalised criminality is enormous.

In their highly-racialised prison system thousands are confined on death row. From time to time, the world is forced to witness the obscenity of capital punishment - in the land of the free!

It will take years to come to a balanced judgment on Saudi Arabia.

Just as cultural engagement by the likes of Paul Simon had a hastening effect on the defeat of apartheid in South Africa, sporting links such as the Newcastle United deal and the forthcoming World Cup in Qatar will, I suggest, encourage positive developments right across the Arabian peninsula.

We have to accept the world can be a complicated and cruel place for some.

Yet to confront injustice in an unengaged, clean-hands manner won’t put things right. JOHN HODGKINS,

Seaton Sluice