Can we guarantee the safety of those who flee Saudi Arabia? Do we even want to?

There’s a noticeable double standard around the handling of the lonely deaths of Asra Abdullah Alsehli and Amaal Abdullah Alsehli in a Canterbury flat earlier this year.

The lack of information from NSW Police — we still don’t know why the sisters died, for example; the political quiet around the case; the seeming drift of the case into the status of half-remembered mystery. Now we learn that their bodies have been returned to Saudi Arabia, with some mystery about when this occurred.

If the sisters had sought asylum from Russia, Iran or China rather than Saudi Arabia, it would be very, very different: politicians would be demanding answers; the flow of information from police that accompanies high-profile cases would be steady and full; theories of Russian, Chinese or Iranian agents murdering people in Australia would be regularly aired. Instead, police have allowed a theory of “tragic suicide” to be filtered into the media.

With that, we seem to be being encouraged to forget about Asra and Amaal, two evidently frightened women who were hoping for sanctuary in Australia after fleeing one of the world’s most appalling regimes, who now join the list of women who end up dead when they try to escape a brutal, misogynist regime. All the more so because in Australia we’re accustomed to seeing asylum-seeking through the lens of the maritime arrivals conflagration, not the desperation of people being victimised by their own governments.

What we do know is that the Saudi regime has no respect either for basic human rights or for norms of international conduct. Like the Putin regime in Russia, it is perfectly happy to abduct, “disappear” or murder critics and dissenters abroad — in the case of Jamal Kashoggi, in an even more gruesome manner than Putin’s obsession with nerve agents. And its treatment of internal critics would make the Chinese blush: a woman sentenced to decades in jail for tweets; women sexually assaulted, tortured and murdered in Saudi prisons.

On this basis, suspicion of foul play must automatically fall on the Saudi regime in relation to the deaths of the sisters.

But what we also know is that Western governments, including our own, see Saudi crimes as an inconvenience in the broader relationship with a regime that wields substantial power over oil prices but which is also, now, a major source of potential investment, and which is allied to Western interests in its region.

The Morrison government was reluctantly forced to condemn the murder of Kashoggi in 2018 after international outrage made its silence on the matter untenable. In June last year, former foreign affairs minister Marise Payne was happy to announce a new ambassador to the kingdom, Mark Donovan.

“Australia has a strong and growing bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia, with which we share economic ties and security interests,” Payne trilled. No mention of Saudi Arabia’s horrific war in Yemen, its ongoing war on women at home, or its murders abroad. Back to business as usual.

Perhaps the sisters’ deaths were indeed a “tragic suicide”, of young women lost and unhappy without family or anchors in an alien culture, especially in a city like Sydney where community bonds have been bulldozed along with the houses levelled to make way for apartment blocks. Or perhaps the prospect of failing in their asylum bid was too much. But without peddling conspiracy theories, Australians have reason to think not merely that the Saudi government was involved, but that our own governments have little incentive to examine that involvement too closely, and would prefer the women slipped from collective memory.

The lack of transparency around their deaths only serves to amplify this sense that something is deeply amiss. Presumably our intelligence services keep an eye on the actions of people connected to the Saudi government and embassy here. Has NSW Police spoken to them? So many questions.

More broadly, it’s strange that a country prepared to endanger its own economic interests to stand up to China isn’t prepared to be more vocal about a regime that, pound for pound, is even worse than Beijing. Especially when we know its disposition to murder those who displease or embarrass it. That’s why transparency about this case is crucial.

If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault or violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au. For anyone seeking help for depression or suicide iteration, Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue is 1300 22 4636. In an emergency, call 000.