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Fahd bin Abdul Aziz
Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz
Naef Bin Abdul Aziz
Salman Bin Abdul Aziz
Ahmad Bin Abdul Aziz
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1994 Critique Report on Human Rights Violations in Saudi
Arabia
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In 1994 the Saudi Arabian government's pervasive
abuse of human rights continued unabated. The kingdom singled out critics
of the government for mistreatment, including persons associated with the
Committee for Defense of Legitimate Rights (al-lajna l'l-difa' 'an al-huquq
al-shar'iyya, CDLR). One of the CDLR's founders, Dr. Muhammad al-Mas'ari,
fled to England in 1994 after a lengthy period of confinement in 1993,
during which it is likely that he was tortured by Saudi security forces.
Other elements of the increasingly vocal opposition also suffered at the
hands of the Saudi security apparatus in 1994 for their public criticism
of the government. In addition, the many deplorable human rights abuses
not directly connected with the present dynamic political situation in the
kingdom, but noted in previous years both in the State Department's report
and in this Critique, remained unchecked.
Thus, the overall human rights situation in Saudi Arabia during 1994
cannot be said to have improved. To make sense of the current human rights
situation in Saudi Arabia, some reference to the changing political
circumstances in the kingdom is required. Opposition groups, an
unprecedented phenomenon, have borne the brunt of Saudi human rights
abuses in the last two years, including arbitrary detainment,
incommunicado detention, absence of due (or, for that matter, any)
process, and, most distressingly, torture. All of these practices violate
accepted and binding norms of international human rights law. In addition,
the fact that such groups criticize the Saudi government from a religious
perspective reinforces the government's perceived need to advertise its
religious legitimacy, thus providing an incentive for it to tolerate human
rights abuses perpetrated in the name of Wahhabi Islam, for example, those
committed by the religious police (Mutawwi'in).
This year's report, like its predecessors, provides a fair and reasonably
accurate catalogue of human rights abuses committed, or tolerated, by the
Saudi government. In an encouraging development, the report has gone some
way toward remedying two principal shortcomings addressed in last year's
edition of the Critique the failure to provide a coherent context for
Saudi human rights abuses and the failure to explain with sufficient
precision the role of the Mutawwi'in and related persons. While further
improvements could have been made in both areas, the fact that the
drafters of this year's report turned their attention to both problems is
in itself noteworthy. The report could now take a major step forward by
including in its introductory section a statement to the effect that the
Saudi government has so far failed to cope with the challenges posed by a
nascent opposition movement. Other problems in this year's report include
confused references to the role of Islam, an over-eager reliance on
government information, and an occasional lack of illuminating detail.
This year's report acknowledges, but only very obliquely, that religious
and political discourse are indissolubly linked in Saudi Arabia. The
introduction states that: "The government's legitimacy is based on
its adherence to the Shari'a and upon the consent of the governed, who are
obliged to obey the ruler as long as he continues to govern according to
Islamic law." This vague paraphrase of classical theories of Islamic
government is not, however, expressly linked either to the recent
expressions of dissent or to the government's response.
Nevertheless, this faint thread is picked up again in the report's
characterization of the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars (hay'at kibar
al-'ulama') as supportive of government policies and as "an important
source of religious legitimacy" for the government. While this modest
attempt to link religion and politics in the kingdom is laudable, the
analysis must still be taken a step farther.
Nervous about criticism from Islamic quarters, especially from
conservatives, the Saudi government has opted to perpetrate, or at least
tolerate, two categories of human rights abuses: those designed for public
consumption such as denial of women's rights, repression of religious
minorities and corporal and capital punishment, which are apparently
considered quintessentially Islamic and those designed to mute political
discussion in the kingdom such as arbitrary arrest of opponents,
prohibition of free speech and expression and the acquisition of foreign
media. For the most part, the report gives an adequate description of
individual incidents of both types. However, for the pattern of abuse to
emerge more clearly, this dual aspect of Saudi human rights violations
requires further elucidation.
This point has ramifications for a number of interrelated human rights
problems discussed in this year's report. For example, the government's
decision in March to outlaw TV satellite dishes reflects on one hand its
deep-seated fear that its citizens might gain uncontrolled access to
information. At the same time, it allows the government to claim that it
is sanitizing the air waves of un-Islamic broadcasts.
While the report's discussion of this issue is not lacking in helpful
detail, the overall context is not sufficiently fleshed out.
The 1994 report again fails to mention the deliberate policy of the Saudi
government to buy up free organs of the Arabic press operating abroad.
This policy, discussed in last year's Critique, is directly traceable to
the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia. It is designed to extend to
other countries the severe limits on expression that prevail within the
kingdom's borders, and to remove all vestiges of criticism of the Saudi
government from public view. Disturbing evidence of this policy in 1994
which the report ignores was the censorship of news programs on a
Saudi-controlled radio network in the United States, the Arab Network of
America (ANA). After an appearance by CDLR member Dr. Muhammad al-Mas'ari
for an on-the-air interview on ANA in September, the program in which he
appeared was cancelled by the network's owners (relatives of King Fahd)
and replaced by a news show hosted by an employee of the Saudi-owned Saudi
Arabian Academy. Perhaps now that Saudi censorship has reared its ugly
head in the United States, the State Department will take seriously Saudi
attempts to control media abroad and discuss them in future reports.
As noted above, the descriptions of actions by the Saudi religious police
have improved in this year's report. It states that the Mutawwi'in
"are government employees; however, other citizens sometimes
represent themselves as Mutawwa'in [sic] when in fact they are not."
This statement seeks to clarify the relationship between the Mutawwi'in,
those who act as though they were Mutawwi'in, and the government. More
important, the report notes that the Mutawwi'in and "religious
vigilantes" continued to harass both foreigners and Saudis, and that
the Saudi government "has not condemned the actions of religious
vigilantes or sought to disband such groups." Past reports have often
implied that human rights abuses committed by the Mutawwi'in were equally
(or perhaps solely) attributable to their unofficial imitators, as though
that relieved the Saudi government of responsibility. It is a very welcome
improvement that this year's report attributes some measure of
responsibility to the Saudi government for the actions both of the
vigilantes and of the Mutawwi'in proper.
As last year's edition of the Critique pointed out, the Saudi government
is prepared to accept a certain baseline of human rights abuses by such
groups in order to project its commitment to a puritanical interpretation
of Islam. The indignant recounting in this year's report of the brutal
assault on a female US citizen by the religious police, and the Saudi
response to US protests indicating that "very strong measures had
been taken," highlight the limits of the behavior that the government
will tolerate. That the government would have responded similarly to
Egyptian or Venezuelan diplomatic protests concerning beatings of their
citizens also noted in the report is unlikely. It remains to be seen
whether, as the report claims, abuses committed by the Mutawwi'in are in
fact declining.
This year's report, like its predecessors, is dogged by the problem of how
to make appropriate references to Islam. For example, the statement in
this year's introduction that "[m]ost Saudis respect the legal
system, which they believe is divinely inspired," appears to
contradict the assertion in the section on the denial of fair public trial
that "[i]n general, the public perceives members of the royal family,
and other powerful families, as not subject to the same rule of law as
ordinary citizens." Since it is unlikely that "most Saudis"
believe this situation to be "divinely inspired," it would
probably be more accurate to say that many (perhaps most) Saudis support
the application of Islamic law in Saudi Arabia, and believe that Islamic
law itself derives from God's commandments. As recent events in the
kingdom indicate, however, there is serious disagreement about the Saudi
government's adherence to Islamic norms of governance and law in practice.
Such disagreement reflects a larger discussion among Muslims generally
about what these norms are, or should be, and is, of course, not limited
to Saudi Arabia. However, it is that debate which underlies the manner of
expression of opposition to the Saudi government, and the Saudi
government's response.
Similarly, the report's discussion of the denial of equal rights to women
under Saudi law could have been clearer. The report states that "by
religious law and social custom" women suffer pernicious and
pervasive discrimination in Saudi Arabia. It should be noted that such
discrimination adequately detailed by the report is in some instances
reinforced by the Saudi government's support for a certain interpretation
of Islamic law, such as strict segregation of the sexes, rules for
appropriate attire for women, and discrimination against women in many
sectors of the economy. On the other hand, it would be appropriate to cite
openly the purported Koranic basis for such ugly practices as the
instances of "spousal abuse" noted in the report. The Koran
enjoins husbands as follows:
Men have been put in charge of women inasmuch as God has preferred one
over the other. . . As for those women whose rebelliousness is feared,
admonish them, desist from conjugal relations with them (wa'hjuruhunna fi
al-madaji'), and beat them (wa'drubuhunna). (Koran IV:34) While it is
difficult to interpret away such passages, it is deplorable as the report
says that the state-controlled media in Saudi Arabia deliberately urges
them upon men as acceptable behavior.
This year's report also has difficulty in deciding how to characterize the
CDLR and similar groups, a further sign of its general uncertainty about
how to deal with manifestations of Islam.
Inexplicably, the report's introduction omits all mention of opposition
groups operating inside Saudi Arabia, a critical fact necessary to an
understanding of the overall human rights situation there. This glaring
omission may stem from the apparent unease of the report's authors at the
Islamic character of the opposition. For example, two detainees (probably
Salman al-'Awdah and Safar al-Hawali) are described as "two
fundamentalist Shaykhs." The loaded term "fundamentalist"
obviously has little meaning as a distinguishing feature in a country
where the chief government-sponsored cleric, Shaykh Ibn Baz, is an
arch-conservative who could just as easily be described as
fundamentalist." The reader is led to the inescapable conclusion that
this label is intended to be pejorative.
Similarly, the report states that "the CDLR criticizes the
Government's human rights record from the perspective of Islamic
principles and advocates stricter adherence to Islamic principles by the
Royal family and the Government." While this characterization is
accurate as far as it goes, it takes on an additional resonance when read
in conjunction with the description of Dr. al-Mas'ari's views, which,
according to the report, "have expressed opposition to peace with
Israel and to Saudi support for the peace process." It is unclear
what relevance this has to the government's persecution, arrest and
torture of persons such as Dr. al-Mas'ari. Such information is relevant
only if the drafters of the report wish to make the point, advanced last
year in this Critique, that the Saudi government offers token support for
a particular brand of Islam such as human rights abuses by the Mutawwi'in
to certain constituencies in exchange for those constituencies not
opposing policies that are inconsistent with that same brand of Islam such
as peace with Israel. Recent events suggest that the Saudi government's
ability to keep such constituencies in line is waning.
Otherwise, Dr. al-Mas'ari's position on peace with Israel is irrelevant
and its inclusion in the report could be construed as an attempt to
justify the Saudi government's persecution of CDLR members.
To its credit, the 1994 report does note the detention and mistreatment of
members of Dr. al-Mas'ari's family and others after his dramatic escape to
England in April. The report might also have pointed out that the United
Kingdom in a baffling failure to correctly apply accepted norms of
international humanitarian law denied Dr. al-Mas'ari's claim for political
asylum in November. The report should also have noted the allegation which
appeared in a widely publicized article in The New Yorker that the Saudi
government engineered the snatching of Dr. al-Mas'ari's young stepson,
born to his American wife in a previous marriage. If this allegation, and
the disturbing suggestion that US embassy officials dragged their feet in
relation to this matter, was not credible, the report should have said so.
In dealing with certain instances of human rights abuses, the drafters of
this year's report also chose to rely on information emanating from the
Saudi government instead of adopting a more skeptical attitude. In
September the government carried out mass arrests of supporters of the
popular preachers Salman al-'Awdah and Safar al-Hawali, both of whom are
openly critical of the government and have been banned from public
speaking since 1991. The report states that 157 persons were arrested in
connection with demonstrations of support for the two shaykhs, 130 of whom
were subsequently released, with 27 remaining in detention. The source for
these figures is the Saudi government. They stem from an official
statement by the Ministry of the Interior given to the state-controlled
Saudi press and published on September 26, and repeated by King Fahd
himself in an interview with the Egyptian press released on October 20.
Since the report itself notes that in general "[t]here is
insufficient information to determine the number of political prisoners
because the Government does not provide information on such persons or
respond to inquiries about them," it is difficult to see why it would
rely on the Saudi government's own figures in such a case. The CDLR
estimated the total number of detainees at between 1,000 and 1,500; even
if that figure is exaggerated, it does not mean that the government
figures are accurate.
A related problem concerns an Amnesty International report detailing the
abuses to which Iraqi refugees from the Gulf War were subjected while
housed in camps in Saudi Arabia between 1991 and 1993.
While instances of abuse have been referred to in previous reports, as
well as in prior editions of the Critique, the sheer brutality of the
abuses described by the Amnesty report, which was based on interviews with
refugees from the al-Rafha camp (still housing approximately 23,000 Iraqi
refugees) and the now closed Artawiya camp, was shocking. Among the abuses
recounted were forced repatriation, beatings, shootings, trials falling
far short of internationally accepted standards, corporal punishment,
torture and even killings all in violation of recognized standards of
international human rights and humanitarian law. Sadly, this year's report
attempts to discredit Amnesty's findings, claiming that its
"allegations were inaccurate and exaggerated," though it noted
that some of the incidents reported had been confirmed by the
International Committee of the red Cross (ICRC) and UNHCR. In criticizing
Amnesty's findings, the report cites "reliable sources." Since
UNHCR and the ICRC are cited by name in the same paragraph, one may
surmise that the "reliable sources" are none other than the
Saudi government. Recognizing that confidential sources of information may
legitimately require protection, the report should have stated whether the
source in this instance was non-governmental. To do so would have enhanced
the report's credibility. If, on the other hand, the source was the Saudi
government, the report should either note that fact explicitly so that its
readers may make their own judgments, or be more cautious in its
assertions.
The report should have noted two additional facts relating to the
situation of Iraqi refugees. First, the Saudi government declined to
assist a UN-sponsored investigation into the March 1993 death of Jabbar
Muhammad Karim al-Etaym at the al-Rafha camp, conducted under the auspices
of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary
Executions. Second, as reported by Amnesty, the ICRC closed its office in
Riyadh in January following a dispute with the Saudi government over the
status of the Iraqi refugees. It is thought that the ICRC believed the
Iraqis at al-Rafha to be civilian internees covered by the protections of
the Fourth Geneva Convention (relating to civilians during time of war),
and therefore falling within the mandate of the ICRC, and that the Saudi
government regarded them instead as refugees, thus limiting the ICRC's
potential protection function.
Omission of such information perpetuates a disturbing trend in recent
reports namely a failure to report on Saudi Arabia's many disputes with
intergovernmental organizations, such as the UN and now the ICRC,
responsible for monitoring compliance with international human rights and
humanitarian law.
The report paints a grim picture of abuses of worker rights in Saudi
Arabia, noting among other problems the prohibition on the right to
organize, to strike and to bargain collectively. Nevertheless, important
details were omitted. The report should have noted that employees who
complain about violations of labor regulations face the possibility of
arbitrary arrest, detainment and torture, as happened to the plaintiff in
the recent case of Saudi Arabia, et al. v. Nelson, decided by the US
Supreme Court in early 1993. In that case, the US government sided with
Saudi Arabia in seeking to bar US citizens from suing foreign governments
for acts of torture committed abroad, even though the plaintiff had been
recruited in the United States. Echoes of the Nelson case linger. In
October, an Egyptian national was sentenced to public flogging for
complaining that a school principal had sexually abused his son, an
incident that the report fails to mention.
The report might also have mentioned the disturbing allegations that
surfaced in a lawsuit brought against Prince Saad (a brother of King
Fahd), namely that he confined two maids against their will in a Houston
hotel. The London Times reported that in July a Saudi consular officer in
Houston, Ahmed Zahrany, fled to England in connection with this matter and
requested asylum. Although the report does not mention Mr. Zahrany, it
does note the much discussed defection of another Saudi diplomat to the
United States, Mohammed Khilewi. Mr. Khilewi was granted political asylum
by the United States, indicating that he was able to demonstrate a
well-founded fear of persecution had he returned to his native country.
The report should also have commented on the reports of sudden mass
deportations of workers from developing countries undertaken by the Saudi
government beginning in November. Finally, the report should have noted,
as pointed out in last year's edition of the Critique, that Saudi Arabia's
eligibility for certain insurance and guarantee programs offered by the
Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) remains under review as a
result of an application filed by the AFL-CIO with the US government,
alleging systematic abuse of worker rights. |
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