IKEA has become the latest firm to respond to woke snowflake tantrums and to pull its adverts from the little watched news channel GB News. It says that Andrew Neil’s channel does not share its “humanistic” values without being able to cite one instance from its 60 hours on air of why this is the case. As well as being a betrayal of free speech this is rank hypocrisy from a company operating four stores in Saudi Arabia.
In case you missed it, this week Saudi cut the head off a 26 year old man, Mustafa bin Hashim bin Isa al-Darwish. He was originally arrested when 17, a minor, for the heinous crime of taking part in a protest march. Later released he was picked up again aged 20 and the Police found an image on his mobile which the Police found offensive and that is the crime which saw him executed this week.
IKEA’s Saudi catalogue contains no images of women for in this kleptocratic regime which executes more folks per head of population than any other than earth, women are second class citizens. As for gay rights, you is ‘avin’ a giraffe. Being gay or lesbian in Saudia Arabia is a criminal offence punishable by public whippings, prison, fines or even death. Even saying you support gay rights with a tweet is illegal. On 28 July 2020, a Saudi court sentenced Mohamad al-Bokari, a Yemeni blogger, to 10 months in prison, a fine of 10,000 riyals ($2,600) and deportation for a Twitter post supporting equal rights for people in same sex relationships.
Natch Saudi, which stands accused of horrific war crimes in the Yemen civil war, was a member of the UN Human Rights Council until 2019 so maybe that is IKEA’s get out of jai, card. If the – morally bankrupt UN says that it is okay, then it must be.
Of course, the sort of lefties trying to shut GB News down do not care about Saudi’s atrocious record on human rights, they are normally protesting about the only Country in the Middle east giving full, rights to women, to all those living there of whatever race and to the LGBT Community and which has not executed anyone since 1962 and that was Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Of course Israel is the Great Satan and Saudi cannot do any wrong because it is run by Arabs.
But IKEA should, as a company that plays along with the suppression of women’s rights and which says nothing about the oppression of gays, the grisly toll of, often public, executions and the war crimes in Yemen, be the last company on earth to lecture us all on humanistic values.
I would not dream of shopping at IKEA anyway for reasons you can guess but I suggest that anyone who cares about free speech in Britain and basic human rights oversees should think hard about giving their custom to a company founded in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad an active Swedish Nazi. Did he ever claim to have humanistic values? #BoycottIKEA