Cambridge Student PEN and Cambridge University Amnesty International (CUAI) gathered in the centre of the city today to demonstrate against the sentencing of Raif Badawi and his lawyer Waleed Abu al-Khair.

The Saudi blogger has been condemned to 1000 lashes, ten years of jail and fined one million Saudi Riyals (£175,000) for “founding a liberal website” and “insulting Islam”. His lawyer has also been given a 15-year jail sentence for defending Raif Badawi’s basic human rights in Saudi Arabia.

Raif Badawi is due to receive 50 lashes in public every Friday for 20 weeks; the first round of which was received on 9th February. The postponement comes after a global wave of protests and vigils about the case. Writing on the Facebook page before the demonstration, Cambridge PEN welcomed the postponement, but added “it is important that the pressure on Saudi Arabia is maintained”.

A small yet passionate crowd stood in the biting wind outside King’s chapel, holding placards that read “#FREERAIF” and “#FREEWALEED”.

Jamie Osborn, who helped co-ordinate the event, described the work of Raif in setting up a forum for debate as “essential to any society”.

“[I]t’s a way of people expressing their human rights and confirming their human rights, so its an affirmative way of protecting something", he went on.

Speaking of the aims of the demonstration, he said: “there’s been such a lot of international protest that we hope that it will have some effect. We are also in contact with [Raif’s] wife and with his sister and we are hoping to send information to them that we are standing with Raif and with Walid and that we support them and what they are doing, because they are also human rights campaigners.”

PEN International is calling for Raid Badawi’s sentence of flogging to be overturned immediately, in a statement released on their website PEN has said of the penalty: “it violates the absolute prohibition in international law against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Since being founded almost a year ago, Cambridge PEN has grown in strength and support. It identifies as a society “for freedom of expression and promoting exchange of ideas in translation.”

Last term PEN held events to mark the ‘Day of the Imprisoned Writer’ and a day of ‘Unsheltered Poets’, reading out works by writers who have fought against restrictions to their freedom.

Other events included a 24-hour vigil in support of the Syrian Writers' Union and the victims of ISIS, where a tent was erected as a symbol of the only shelter remaining for the victims of the Islamic rebels.