The street in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, DC, has been renamed to support murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Wednesday, and activists vowed to never forget him, even though President Joe Biden is planning to visit the kingdom.
In honour of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident who was killed and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, the city government of the capital changed signs on one block in front of the notable Saudi embassy to read “Jamal Khashoggi Way.”
Phil Mendelson, president of the District of Columbia Council, said that the street will be a “constant reminder, a memorial to Jamal Khashoggi’s memory that can’t be covered up.” The council voted unanimously to rename the stretch of New Hampshire Avenue that runs next to the famous Watergate building.
The dedication was already planned, and it happened a day after the White House said that Biden will go to Saudi Arabia next month to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who US intelligence says ordered the killing.
Biden had said in the past that he would make Saudi Arabia a pariah country because of human rights concerns, like the killing of Khashoggi, who had written critical articles about the powerful prince for The Washington Post.
Activist and writer from Yemen who won the Nobel Peace Prize, Tawakkol Karman, said at the ceremony that the upcoming trip “means that Biden has given up on his promise to support human rights around the world.”
Sarah Leah Whitson, who runs the rights group called Democracy for the Arab World Now and is in charge of its operations, expressed Biden’s move as a “shameless capitulation.”
Standing in front of the embassy, she said, “We want to remind the people hiding behind those doors that this is Jamal Khashoggi Way every day, every hour, every minute.”
“We will hold them responsible for the death of our friend, Jamal Khashoggi, a brave Saudi man who dared to stand up to Mohammed bin Salman’s rule.”
The Biden administration says it is taking a tougher stance than former president Donald Trump, who was friendly with the crown prince. However, the United States still has important interests with Saudi Arabia, which is a major oil producer at a time when energy prices are going up.
Jamal Khashoggi Way is the latest street in Washington to have its name changed to send a message.
Boris Nemtsov Plaza, named after the reformist politician who was killed near the Kremlin in 2015, is where Russia’s embassy is located.
After strong opposition from Beijing, a plan to name the plaza outside China’s embassy after Liu Xiaobo, a writer and democracy activist who won the Nobel Prize and died in prison, failed.
Other governments have sometimes done things like the United States, whose consulate in Kolkata is on a street named after the Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh.
Works at The Truth International Magazine. My area of interest includes international relations, peace & conflict studies, qualitative & quantitative research in social sciences, and world politics. Reach@ [email protected]
