Saudi Arabia – Unspoken Human Rights Abuses

An article by Frank    No Comments

You could be forgiven if you thought that Iran was the biggest abuser of human rights in the Middle East since that’s where media attention is focused and has been since Saddam Hussein was toppled in Iraq. Prior to that taking place, Iraq was in the headlines and being viewed as the biggest abuser – it served the push for war extremely well.

The method is clear, highlight the human rights abuses undertaken by the government of the country you want to attack and you have a recipe for softening public opposition to those attacks since nobody likes despots who oppress the population of their country using force, violence and abuse. The same thing happened with the Taliban in Afghanistan prior to the invasion of that country post 9/11.

Have you noticed that quite a bit of rhetoric that floats around about Iran at the moment is about how oppressive the government is, abusing the rights of the people and squashing democracy? This keeps the door open for military attack with public support. That’s not to say that the current Iranian regime doesn’t fit that description, but if it’s really about human rights abuses then the spotlight needs to be turned somewhere else as well, squarely on to a U.S ally – Saudi Arabia.

The problem is that Saudi Arabia carries on with little to no criticism from the U.S government (its biggest ally) over its suppression of democracy and its human rights abuses and therefore the mass media of today that relies heavily on political press releases hardly mentions it. From there the silence continues with little protest from human rights organisations (except the likes of Amnesty International) about Saudi Arabia’s abuses of humanity.

Amnesty offers a brief insight into the human rights abuses that take place in Saudi Arabia on their website:

The push for political reform, occurring simultaneously with an increasingly unsettled security situation, has created a very unpredictable human rights environment. Killings by both government security forces and armed groups occur periodically, either in attacks or shootouts. Torture and ill-treatment persist, as do incommunicado detention, prolonged detention without charge, and unfair trials. There are scores of political prisoners and possible prisoners of conscience. Saudi Arabia continues to use flogging and amputations as punishments. Executions, beheadings with a sword, occur regularly and are disproportionately carried out against foreign nationals. Foreign workers are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, particularly female domestic workers, who have virtually no protection at all.

Nowhere has the discussion of political reform been more animated than on the issue of women’s rights, though there has been little real progress. Municipal elections were held in early 2005 for half the seats in the Kingdom’s municipalities, but women were excluded for participation, and proposals to allow women to drive have been shelved. Awareness of the problem of violence against women has increased as a result of the severe beating of well-known TV personality Rania al-Baz by her husband, but there have been few changes to prevent or provide redress for such violence. Suspected homosexuals have been subjected to flogging. Though there has been some improvement, freedom of expression remains extremely curtailed, and discrimination on the basis of religion is absolute. Shiites face discrimination in all walks of life, and non-Muslim foreign nationals are subjected to harassment, detention, abuse and summary deportation. Executions have been carried out for witchcraft and apostasy.

Saudi Arabia is ruled by a monarchy that is restricted by Shari’a law and now has a central government made up of ministers appointed by the king. IN 2008 it was listed as the 7th most authoritarian regime amongst 167 in the Democracy Index put out by The Economist, Iran was the 23rd most authoritarian and North Korea was the most authoritarian. I would expect to see Iran head higher in the authoritarian stakes in the 2010 list.

Saudi Arabia is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child but currently has a young lady on death row who committed a murder at the age of 17. They also have a case at the moment where a 13 year old girl is to receive 90 lashes in front of her classmates and 2 months in prison for assaulting her teacher – the details of the allegation are unclear and follow reports in December that a 75 year old woman  had received a sentence of flogging and imprisonment for being caught in private with a member of the opposite sex. These stories are just the tip of the iceberg.

The litany of hardly noticed stories representing abuses of human rights in Saudi Arabia point to a clearly oppressive regime and its response is that its only guide is Islamic law. Why is the hammer of judgment not brought down on Saudi Arabia? Why does the U.S remain largely silent? Why aren’t more organisations screaming about it? Why is it left to a handful of organisations beating that drum? Why is Iran so heavily scrutinized while Saudi Arabia continues along its course? Where is the accountability? Is it a case of money and oil talking loudly?