Home

Follow Countercurrents on Twitter 

Google+ 

Support Us

Popularise CC

Join News Letter

CounterSolutions

CounterImages

CounterVideos

Editor's Picks

Press Releases

Action Alert

Feed Burner

Read CC In Your
Own Language

Bradley Manning

India Burning

Mumbai Terror

Financial Crisis

Iraq

AfPak War

Peak Oil

Globalisation

Localism

Alternative Energy

Climate Change

US Imperialism

US Elections

Palestine

Latin America

Communalism

Gender/Feminism

Dalit

Humanrights

Economy

India-pakistan

Kashmir

Environment

Book Review

Gujarat Pogrom

Kandhamal Violence

WSF

Arts/Culture

India Elections

Archives

Links

Submission Policy

About Us

Disclaimer

Fair Use Notice

Contact Us

Search Our Archive

 



Our Site

Web

Subscribe To Our
News Letter

Name: E-mail:

 

Printer Friendly Version

Protests, Prosecution And Punishment In Saudi Arabia

By Countercurrents.org

03 November, 2012
Countercurrents.org

Saudi Arabia is experiencing protests, prosecution and punishments. The following reports reveal a few facts:

An international rights group urged Saudi Arabia on October 28, 2012 to stop prosecuting and punishing people for peaceful protests, after the kingdom charged 19 men for staging a sit-down demonstration outside a prison in September.

Security forces arrested dozens of men after the Sept. 23 protest near Tarfiya prison in central Saudi Arabia to press for the release of detained relatives. Demonstrators and a rights activist said police had kept the protesters, including women and children, without food or water for nearly a day.

In a separate demonstration on the same day, dozens of protesters gathered in front of the government-linked Saudi Human Rights Commission also calling for the release of jailed relatives.

Human Rights Watch said the Saudi Bureau of Investigation and Prosecution charged the 19 men on Oct. 17 with 'instigating chaos and sedition' and 'gathering illegally'.

The following day, 15 of them were sentenced to between three and 15 days in jail. The court also handed the men suspended sentences of between 50 and 90 lashes and suspended jail terms of between two and five months.

The rest are scheduled to be tried on Nov. 4.

"Instead of addressing the protesters' concerns, the Saudi government has used the judicial system to punish them," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

"The sentences handed to these men are part of a wider effort to target and harass activists across the country."

Saudi officials were not immediately available to comment on the report.

Saudi Arabia, a key Gulf ally of the United States and the world's top oil exporter, banned protests in March 2011, after demonstrations began sweeping the Arab world in what became known as the Arab Spring.

In a statement on Oct. 12, the Interior Ministry warned Saudis to "refrain from staging rallies or taking part in any gathering or procession in violation of the law" and that those detained for doing so would be dealt with harshly.

Human Rights Watch said that Saudi authorities had not accused the protesters of violence during the sit-down protest.

Saudi Arabia, which has been a target for al Qaeda attacks, say the protesters' relatives were all being held on security grounds. But activists say some are also held for purely political activity and have never been charged.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said those accused of "terrorism-related" crimes were being dealt with in a fair judicial process.

Human Rights Watch said Saudi authorities had cracked down on activists for organizing peaceful demonstrations in various parts of the country, including the capital Riyadh.

In April, a court in Riyadh sentenced campaigner Mohammed al-Bajadi to four years in prison after he was accused of forming a human rights association, tarnishing Saudi Arabia's reputation, questioning the independence of the judiciary, and owning illegal books, activists said.

He had been held for a year without charge after voicing support for prisoners' families.

Earlier Asma Alsharif reported [2] from Jeddah:

Security forces detained on September 24, 2012 dozens of men who had staged a protest near a prison in central Saudi Arabia to press for the release of relatives, demonstrators and a rights activist said. The arrests were made after police had confined the protesters, who included women and small children, to a desert area outside the prison where they were kept without food or water for nearly a day, protesters and activists said.

It was a rare demonstration in the world’s biggest oil exporter, where protests are banned.

Activists said police with shields and batons persuaded the protesters at the prison to go home, telling them their message had been heard and their demands would be looked into.

“When we left the ‘Emergency Forces’ followed our cars. They chased us and stopped us to detain the men,” said Reema al-Juraish, a protester whose husband is in the prison.

“I saw them grab five and when I tried to intervene they pushed me and hit me with a baton.”

She said up to 60 men where arrested and taken to an unknown location.

More than 100 people, including women and children, had staged a one-day protest in the desert around Tarfiya prison in the Qassim province but were surrounded by police. They said they had been kept without food or water for almost a full day.

Police set up checkpoints on the two roads leading to the area and deployed patrols in the desert around it.

The kingdom avoided the kind of unrest that toppled leaders across the Arab world last year after it introduced generous social spending packages and issued a religious edict banning public demonstrations.

Last year the Interior Ministry said it had put on trial 5,080 of nearly 5,700 people detained on security grounds.

In another report [3] from Riyadh, Angus McDowall informed:

Dozens of Saudis staged a rare protest on September 10, 2012 against the detention of relatives held without trial for security offenses.

Up to 50 people, including eight women, stood quietly outside a prosecutor's office by the side of a Riyadh road watched by uniformed policemen sitting in three police cars.

The U.S. ally and world's biggest oil exporter has played a critical role in helping Western intelligence agencies foil plots by al Qaeda. But rights groups have faulted it for a near total lack of democracy and intolerance of dissent.

Human rights groups have also accused the government of using its campaign against Islamist militants to imprison political dissidents.

Saudi Arabia says it has no political prisoners and last year said it had put on trial 5,080 of nearly 5,700 people it had detained on security charges since a series of attacks against foreign and government targets in 2003.

The Saudi embassy in London in December responded to an Amnesty International report that the authorities justified cracking down on dissent by citing security concerns by saying it was based on inaccurate information.

The protesters included adolescents and elderly people. They stood in a tight group without waving placards or shouting slogans. One woman, holding a walking stick, sat on a chair.

"My brother told me he was taken to court last year but it was a secret trial and they didn't let him choose his own lawyer. It's been over a year and we still don't have the result of the trial. In my opinion this trial is nothing but a show," said a protester, who did not want to be named for fear of arrest.

He said his brother had been arrested 11 years ago after returning from Afghanistan where he had gone to fight and that he complained of being beaten in detention.

A spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry was not immediately available to comment but the government has repeatedly denied using torture.

The women protesters wore traditional face-covering veils and many of the men, who also wore traditional dress, also covered their faces with their red-and-white checked Arab scarves, seemingly to hide their identities.

It is unusual for women to join protests in the conservative Islamic kingdom, where gender segregation is strictly enforced.

Despite persistent demonstrations from members of its Shiite Muslim minority that have continued into 2012 and a facebook campaign last spring calling for a "day of rage" the country's Sunni majority mostly stayed off the streets.

However, there have been some small protests outside Shiite areas since the start of last year over specific issues.

In January 2011 unemployed teachers protested in Riyadh and in Jeddah residents of an area hit by floods also demonstrated. Detainees' relatives protested in February and June last year.

In March this year thousands of students at an all-female university in Abha, in southern Saudi Arabia, boycotted lectures after police broke up a protest by some of their classmates over poor campus services

Source:

[1] The Daily Star, Lebanon, Sami Aboudi, “Saudi Arabia should stop prosecuting peaceful protesters-HRW”, Oct. 28, 2012, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2012/Oct-28/192997-saudi-arabia-should-stop-prosecuting-peaceful-protesters-hrw.ashx#axzz2AczJi1H2

[2] The Daily Star, Lebanon, Sept. 25, 2012 “Dozens arrested after prison protest in Saudi Arabia”, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2012/Sep-25/189088-dozens-arrested-after-prison-protest-in-saudi-arabia.ashx#axzz2AczJi1H2

[3] “Saudis stage rare protest over security detentions without trial”, Sept. 10, 2012, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2012/Sep-10/187403-saudis-stage-rare-protest-over-security-detentions-without-trial.ashx#axzz2AczJi1H2

 




 

 


Comments are moderated