Angst in the Gulf

Angst in the Gulf
Al-Ahram Weekly – October 14, 2011

While not on the scale of Bahrain, Saudi Shia rioted yet again for better conditions, reports Rashid Abul-Samh

Saudi security forces probably did not realise that their arrests of two elderly men in their 70s in the village of Awamiyah in the Eastern Province on the night of 3 October would lead to riots in this Shia-majority area for two nights running, injuring 14 people, including 10 policemen.

Saleh Al-Zayed, 72 years old, was one of the men arrested, in an attempt by police to force his son and that of the other man, accused of participating in anti-government protests, to surrender. Al-Zayed suffered a heart attack, the news of which ignited the violent protests outside the police station in which Shia youths threw Molotov cocktails and fired guns at security forces. Videos uploaded to YouTube showed groups of young Saudis, their faces covered by t-shirts, taunting police and blocking roads with empty oil barrels and bonfires.

Comprising roughly 10 per cent of the kingdom’s population of 23 million, the two million Shia live mostly in the oil-rich Eastern Province, and have been protesting regularly for more freedom ever since Saudi forces were dispatched to neighbouring Bahrain in March to help the ruling Sunni Al-Khalifas put down the Shia-led protests there.

Shia have long faced discrimination in Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia which follows a very conservative Wahhabi interpretation of the religion, in which Shia are considered heretics. Human Rights Watch in a 2009 report called on the kingdom to set up a national committee to ensure that Shia had equal access to higher education, equality in employment, including in the security forces, high ministerial positions, and freedom of worship. Unfortunately, to date little has been done to improve the situation of the Shia.

The Saudi Interior Ministry slammed the latest riot, blaming the violence on “a group of outlaws and rioters on motorbikes”, who had gathered in Awamiyah near the city of Qatif “carrying petrol bombs”. It vowed to use an “iron fist” in dealing with such disturbances, and blamed the riot on incitement “from a foreign country that aims to undermine the nation’s security and stability”, according to the Saudi Press Agency. This is usually taken as code-language for meaning Iran was behind the unrest.

Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr of Awamiyah, a prominent Shia cleric, was quick to call for calm, urging protesters to use “words” rather than “bullets” in their fight for more freedom and equality. “The [Saudi] authorities depend on bullets and killing and imprisonment. We must depend on the roar of the word, on the words of justice,” said Nimr in his sermon on the night of 4 October. He said the youth were provoked into rioting after police fired live bullets at them. …more