Saudi Arabia, a major supporter of opposition forces in Syria, has increased crackdown on its own dissenters, with 30,000 activists reportedly in jail. In an exclusive interview to RT a Saudi prince defector explained what the monarchy fears most.
“Saudi Arabia has stepped up arrests and trials of peaceful dissidents, and responded with force to demonstrations by citizens,” Human Rights Watch begins the country’s profile on its website.
Political parties are banned in Saudi Arabia and human rights
groups willing to function legally have to go no further than
investigating things like corruption or inadequate services.
Campaigning for political freedoms is outlawed.
One of such groups, which failed to get its license from the
government, the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association
(ACPRA), was cited by AFP as saying the kingdom was holding
around 30,000 political prisoners.
Saudi Prince Khaled Bin Farhan Al-Saud, who spoke to RT from
Dusseldorf, Germany, confirmed reports of increased prosecution
of anti-government activists and said that it’s exactly what
forced him to defect from his family. He accused the monarchy of
corruption and silencing all voices of dissent and explained how
the Saudi mechanism for suppression functioned.
“There is no independent judiciary, as both police and the
prosecutor’s office are accountable to the Interior Ministry.
This ministry’s officials investigate ‘crimes’ (they call them
crimes), related to freedom of speech. So they fabricate
evidence, don’t allow people to have attorneys”, the prince
told RT Arabic. “Even if a court rules to release such a
‘criminal’, the Ministry of Interior keeps him in prison, even
though there is a court order to release him. There have even
been killings! Killings! And as for the external opposition,
Saudi intelligence forces find these people abroad! There is no
safety inside or outside the country.”
The strong wave of oppression is in response to the
anti-government forces having grown ever more active. A new
opposition group called Saudi Million and claiming independence
from any political party was founded in late July. The Saudi
youths which mostly constitute the movement say they demand the
release of political prisoners and vow to hold regular
demonstrations, announcing their dates and locations via Facebook
and electronic newspapers.
Human rights violations are driving people on to the streets
despite the fear of arrest, according to activist Hala Al-Dosari,
who spoke to RT from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
“We have issues related to political and civil rights, freedom
of expression and freedom of assembly. These are the main issues
that cause a lot of people to be at risk for just voicing out
their opinions or trying to form associations, demonstrate or
protest, which is banned by the government.”
The loudest voice of the Saudi opposition at the moment is
a person called ‘Saudi Assange’. His Twitter name is @Mujtahidd,
he keeps his identity and whereabouts secret and is prolific in
online criticism of the ruling family, which has gained him over
a million followers.
“The regime can destroy your credibility easily and deter
people from dealing with you if your identity is public,”
Mujtahid wrote to RT’s Lindsay France in an email.
Prince Khalid Bin Farhan Al-Saud announced his defection from the Saudi Arabian royal family on July 27.
“They don’t think about anything but their personal benefits and do not care for the country’s and people’s interests, or even national security,” his statement reads as cited by the website of Tehran-based Al Alam International News Channel.
The prince criticized the royal family for silencing all voices calling for reforms and said he learned of the common Saudis’ sufferings having gone through “horrible personal experience,” without specifying exactly what it was.
The Twitter activist’s anonymity is understandable. The most
recent example of what can happen to activists is the case of
Raif
Badawi, the founder of the Free Saudi Liberals website, who
was found guilty of insulting Islam through his online forum and
sentenced the activist to 600 lashes and seven years in prison.
In June, seven people were sentenced
to up to 10 years in prison for ‘inciting protests’ via Facebook.
The indicted denied charges and said they were tortured into
confession.
“The government is obviously scared of the Arab revolutions.
And they’ve responded as they usually do: by resorting to
oppression, violence, arbitrary law, and arrest,” Prince
Khaled says, adding that so far the tougher the measures the
government took to suppress the dissent, the louder that
dissent’s voice was.
“The opposition used to demand wider people’s representation
in governing bodies, more rights and freedoms. But the
authorities reacted with violence and persecution, instead of a
dialogue. So the opposition raised the bar. It demanded
constitutional monarchy, similar to what they have in the UK, for
example. And the Saudi regime responded with more violence. So
now the bar is even higher. Now the opposition wants this regime
gone.”
There was a time, at the beginning of the Arab Spring movement in
the region in 2011, when the government tried to appease
opposition activists by a $60 billion handout program by King
Abdullah, according to Pepe Escobar, a correspondent for the Asia
Times. He calls that move an attempt to “bribe” the population.
However there was also a stick with this carrot.
“The stick is against the Shiite minority - roughly 10 percent
of Saudi Arabia - who live in the Eastern province where most of
the oil is, by the way. They don’t want to bring down the House
of Saud essentially. They want more participation, judiciary not
answering to religious powers and basically more democratic
freedoms. This is not going to happen in Saudi Arabia. Period.
Nor in the other Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC]
petro-monarchies”.
Escobar points out the hypocrisy of the Saudi Arabian rulers, who
feel free to advise other regional powers on how to move towards
democracy, despite their poor human rights record.
“They say to the Americans that they are intervening in Syria
for a more democratic post-Assad Syria and inside Saudi Arabia
it’s the Sunni-Shiite divide. They go against 10 percent of their
own population.”
'Buying favors from West'
Saudi Arabia’s crackdown on opposition has been strongly
condemned by human rights organizations, but not by Western
governments, which usually claim sensitivity to such issues.
“The White House certainly does maintain a long-standing
alliance with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, cemented by common
political, economic and military interests in the Middle
East,” said Prince Khaled.
Germany came under fierce criticism last week over its arms sales
to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, which have almost tripled
in just two years, from 570 million euro in 2011 to almost
one-and-a-half billion in 2012.
And Angela Merkel's government has approved weapons exports of
more than 800 million euro in the first half of this year -
suggesting the level will continue to grow.
“With arms they [Gulf States] are also buying favors from the
West. They are insuring the maintenance of their legitimacy on
spending massive amounts of money that are pouring into Western
economies,” Dr. Ahmed Badawi, co-executive director of
Transform, which studies conflicts and political developments,
told RT.
In 2012, Amnesty International claimed that German-made small
firearms, ammunition and military vehicles were commonly used by
Middle Eastern and North African regimes to suppress peaceful
demonstrations.
“Small arms are becoming real weapons of mass destruction in
the world now. There is absolutely no way to guarantee that the
weapons that are being sold legally to countries like Saudi
Arabia, even Egypt, do not fall into the hands of terrorists. The
two important examples are German assault rifles found in the
regions in Mexico and also in Libya. And there’s absolutely no
way of knowing how these weapons ended up there,” Badawi
said.