Saudi Arabia: Cracking Down Quietly

SAUDI ARABIA: Cracking Down Quietly
By William Fisher – 29 February, 2012

It is being reported that Saudi Arabia’s aging monarch, King Abdullah, is refusing to discuss the Syrian catastrophe with international colleagues. “There is nothing more to say,” he is being quoted as saying.

Well, OK, given the huge rebuff Syrian President Basher al-Assad handed the Arab League, maybe the king’s position is understandable. On the other hand, the King’s neighborhood is chock-a-block with calamity situations triggered by the so-called Arab Spring.

The King should be a tad relieved. Ongoing violence in Syria and Bahrain, continuing post-revolutionary conflict in Egypt and Yemen – all these situations have tended to draw media attention away from locales that don’t present journalists with enough blood-curdling visuals.

And Saudi is one of those locales where brutality has always trumped justice and human rights – and still does. While far more highly-publicized transgressions are pervading the Middle East and North Africa, Saudi has quietly put in place a carrot and stick strategy in an effort to keep the country stable.

The carrots have consisted of generous cash stipends for every Saudi family and the availability of more government jobs and more funds for job training. The sticks have come from the arsenal brutally used by every Middle East dictator in memory.

In March, Saudi Arabia announced that it would not allow any demonstrations or sit-in protests in the country that the government said are aimed at undermining the Kingdom’s security and stability.

“Laws and regulations in the Kingdom totally prohibit all kinds of demonstrations, marches and sit-in protests as well as calling for them as they go against the principles of Shariah and Saudi customs and traditions,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement. The ministry said such demonstrations not only breach the Kingdom’s law and order but also encroach on the rights of others.

Saudi Arabia has blamed an unnamed foreign power for clashes that took place in its oil-rich Eastern Province in which it says 14 people were injured.

Among the people, and largely under the press radar, there appears to be a substantial desire for more human rights. Many of these demands are coming from women who want to seek office and vote, women who want the right to drive, and women who are frustrated with their roles as men’s property.

The Kingdom’s minority Shia population says they suffer from widespread discrimination in housing, top government and private sector jobs, and access to finance.

The King has not hesitated to use the stick part of his carrot-and-stick strategy. He has jailed hundreds of citizens, including many journalists and bloggers. It has long been well documented that Saudi jailers practice torture of prisoners, as do most of the nations of the Middle East-North Africa region. Men and women detained by the Security Forces are likely to lack lawyers and even less likely to experience anything that could pass for due process. Defendants frequently languish in jail for long periods before they are tried. …more