About four years have passed since Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has been killed and his body cut up at his country's consulate in Turkey without achieving even a little bit of justice.

Not only did the murderer manage to escape punishment, but he and his aides were rewarded for their crime that could be classified among the most terrible and ugliest crimes. Indeed, the killing of Jamal Khashoggi falls into “state terrorism".

To our surprise, Jamal Khashoggi was always keen to emphasize that he was not a political dissident and did not intend to turn into an opponent of the Saudi regime’s policies. All he was doing had to do with advice towards a government that was legitimate in his eyes.

 

Dear friends, 

The Jamal Khashoggi case provides evidence that politics could prevail over justice. But such bitter conclusion should not prevent us from defending justice and human rights, especially since the battle between tyrants and advocates of freedoms and human rights has always been unequal. The Khashoggi murder case has shed light on dictatorial regimes and their reaction towards any ideas or voices that call for real political reforms.

It is extremely important to be there voices and platforms that defend freedom and its followers. Therefore, I would like to commend the decision to name the street where the Saudi embassy is located after Jamal Khashoggi. Such a decision could be a message to the regimes practicing terrorism against their citizens that violations against advocates of democracy should not go unpunished or pass without accountability, no matter how powerful politics and political deals.

In this context, the official US statements indicating that Biden has abandoned his commitments to supporting human rights across the world are clearly discouraging, and this changed position seems to be opportunistic and unfair. I am not here to tell the Americans what to do, but it is obligatory for the US administration to be consistent with its stated positions and not set a bad model in the field of justice and human rights.

According to Biden's statements, his visit to Saudi Arabia is aimed to expand the circle of peace. I do not know whether Yemen is within this circle or not. President Biden should be sure that the Saudi and Emirati regimes have been involved in a devastating 8-year war in Yemen. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have contributed to marginalizing and destroying Yemeni legitimacy, in favour of supporting and funding armed groups and militias, thus threatening security and stability during the next phase. One consequence of unconstructive policy pursued by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi in Yemen is that the Houthi militia, a group that embraces fascist ideas and an extremist ideology, has become the primary beneficiary of Saudi and Emirati performance. According to Reuters, Saudi Arabia and the Houthis have been engaged in serious talks to establish normal relations between them.

When Biden meets MBS, perhaps he should ask him about the absurdity being practiced in Yemen, as this may help establish real peace in Yemen. Let me be frank with you! The Saudi and Emirati policy in Yemen is catastrophic. Even worse, such catastrophic policy is intentionally followed. However, I should clearly point out that Iran’s mullahs play also a destructive role in Yemen and provide support for the Houthi militia, which does not believe in political action and suppresses freedoms in a comprehensive manner.

Against this background, I have always demanded that the United States should have an independent policy towards Yemen as one of the region’s longest-standing countries, which controls one of the world’s most strategic straits. American indifference, however, is unmistakable. For the circle of peace and previous commitments to it in Yemen to be expanded, an active diplomacy should be engaged in and greater pressure put on the sponsors of chaos throughout the region.

 

Dear friends,

Jamal Khashoggi’s life was claimed in a horrific way. But he will be always remembered as a symbol of freedom, and his murder will go down in history as a landmark case of tyranny. This street called after his name is proof of that. Undoubtedly, Jamal did not want to die in this brutal manner. But now, he is definitely freer than ever. As for those who plotted and orchestrated his killing, they have brought disgrace on themselves so that they would never be able to erase it no matter what they will do. Justice may be delayed, but it will definitely be done.

We meet today to confirm that fascism will never be the law we submit to. We meet today to perpetuate a person who used to believe in freedom and the word’s role in change. We meet to say that state relations and trade-offs of interests at the expense of human rights and victims have no weight for us and will fail in closing the murder case of Jamal Khashoggi, a crime that has marked the climax of brutality regarding assassinations by intelligence services in modern history.

Naming this street after Jamal Khashoggi is a kind of memorialization for a journalist who was brutally murdered simply for his expression of opinion. This memorialization reminds us that we are also exposed to similar brutal fascism responsible for cutting off the body of Jamal Khashoggi only due to our adherence to our humanity and our right to say what we think is true, and to express our opinions through peaceful ways guaranteed by international humanitarian law and by the regulations and laws in modern democratic countries.

This memorialization of Jamal Khashoggi's name is an affirmation that this world includes people who do not succumb to state deals that sacrifice human rights and justice on the altar of conflict of interests and oil pipelines. Memorializing Jamal Khashoggi and reminding the world of his name are also a commemoration of all the victims of political assassinations and a reminder to the world that extrajudicial killing is a crime against humanity.

The immortalization of Jamal Khashoggi's name is also to remind the UN member states that sending death squads to assassinate political opponents and opinion-makers is a crime that erases the difference between the state and the gang and puts the perpetrators among outlaw mafias.

Those responsible for Saudi Arabia to be in this shameful situation are the ones who took the decision to assassinate the Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi, and not us who are advocating for justice by demanding to bring the perpetrators and their boss before the International Court of Justice because such act falls into the crimes against humanity. 

The cruelest atrocities throughout history have failed to make the human being abandon the belief in their right to life. Humanity has gone through dark times unparalleled in today's world, dark times known for the rule of the jungle and predominance of fascism free of any human laws or customs. However, the black records that revealed millions of victims and the torture, pain and cruelty were a feature of many times did not succeed in establishing crime as a law or forcing humans to submit to the law of the jungle.

The history of oppression and assassinations has not succeeded in breaking the will of human being and their yearning for justice, freedom, and salvation from oppression and authoritarian fascism. The Jamal Khashoggi’s anniversary that brings us together today is an occasion to emphasize these values and not to succumb to the brutality whose sponsors sent a squad to assassinate a writer whose only weapon is his pen.

From here, we say today that freedom and the human right to life are stronger than the monarchy that heavily counts on its oil wealth to make the world be familiar with crimes and assassinations. Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi-American writer who chose the word as a weapon, was exposed to a crime that is so brutal that the whole humanity is ashamed of saying that the perpetrators belong to it.

Our meeting today is not intended to offend anyone. We are here against the crime and the assassination to be used as a means to silence and punish opponents and human rights defenders. Any silence on such practices will be contribution to crime that affects tens, if not hundreds, in many places out of reach of cameras and lacked in a supportive public opinion against its perpetrators.

Jamal Khashoggi, the Arab writer for the Washington Post, whose assassination has turned into an occasion to condemn fascist brutality, becomes a symbol for all those who pay with their lives for freedom of opinion and expression.

If hundreds of political assassinations have been made in darkness and filed against unknown perpetrators, we are today before a crime that claimed the life of a writer of the Washington Post, a crime whose terrifying details and heinous nature shook the whole world, and its perpetrators are known to the world, and embodied in a monarchy that does not hesitate to murder its citizenry in a brutal manner similar to that of ISIS and other terrorist organizations. Justice will remain absent until the perpetrators and their boss are punished.

We talk about justice, crime and punishment, yet we see that enormity of the crime exceeds every punishment against those who committed the crime and gave orders, as this crime is among those ones that exceed the punishment ceiling established by local and international laws. Therefore, we see that the memorialization and moral and political condemnation for this form of crime will achieve one aspect of justice, in addition to direct punishment of the perpetrators and those who ordered them.

At the end of my speech, let me emphasize that the immortalization event of Jamal Khashoggi is an occasion to motivate the world human rights movement to continue its struggle against human rights violators, enhance and raise the level of activities against human rights violations and demand that those responsible for political assassination crimes be brought to justice and not go unpunished.

Today's world is plagued with unprecedented violations of human rights, and therefore our reaction must be strong and our efforts against violations stepped up. It’s an important objective for the global human rights movement to step up pressure on the United Nations member states to adhere to human rights standards in their international relations. We can exert effective pressure, with the aim to stimulate the world order to create more effective measures to confront these violations, put an end to them and punish their perpetrators.

An unprecedented state of human rights violations pervades the world, with the complicity and involvement of major powers and democracies that have given priority to their own interests and paid little attention to the human rights record that has been marginalized in conjunction with the last decade’s conflicts that began with the Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East.

The killing of Jamal Khashoggi and cutting of his body at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was a blatant example of state terrorism and brutality and a terrifying model of extrajudicial killings. Arrests and torture are practices prevailing in Saudi Arabia. Violations like these in Saudi Arabia's prisons continue to exist. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch speak about painful stories in this regard.

Tens of thousands have been killed in Syria, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Russia, Ukraine, Israel and many countries. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi represents the tip of the iceberg for this horrific record of violations, and is expected to bring about a shift in the international attention to human rights and put an end to the international community's negligence in dealing with murderers and criminals.

The silence by the international community over human rights violations under the pretext of preserving the relations between and among states and guaranteeing oil flows makes the whole world an open arena for state terrorism and murder and dismemberment squads that travel from country to another and come back carrying bags with chopped and sliced heads and bodies of opponents. The Khashoggi case is the primary global public opinion issue, and its circumstances and nature have made it difficult and impossible for countries and governments to ignore it.

It has become urgent and necessary to form an international investigation committee into the Khashoggi case. The silence over the Khashoggi murder under the pretext of maintaining the stability of the global economy is nothing but exploitation for political purposes. In other words, such claims sacrifice human values in favour of interests. We call here to mobilize global support for a new penal law for human rights violations by a unanimous vote of the world’s nations.

Two decades ago, optimism pervaded the world about the possibility of global justice due to the trials of war criminals in Yugoslavia. However, all those hopes have faded away and interests emerged again at the expense of values.

Our meeting here to immortalize Jamal Khashoggi is also an opportunity to say that the human rights protection is a primary task to move towards a better world in which rights and freedoms are preserved, a world with an enabling environment for the balance of interests and the adherence to the international humanitarian law and human rights standards.