You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Saudi Arabia’ tag.
Saudi blogger Raif Badawi gets a thousand lashes and 10 years
A Saudi court has jailed blogger Raif Badawi for ten years for “insulting Islam” and setting up a liberal internet forum, local media report.
He was additionally sentenced to 1,000 lashes and ordered to pay a fine of one million riyals ($266,000; £133,000).
Amnesty International called the decision “outrageous” and urged the authorities to quash the verdict.
Mr Badawi, the co-founder of an internet site known as the Liberal Saudi Network, was arrested in 2012.
A Saudi newspaper near the goverment reported thathe had lost his appeal against an earlier, more lenient sentence of seven years and three months in jail and 600 lashes.
Last year he was cleared of apostasy, that could have carried a death sentence.
Mr Badawi had previously called for 7 May to be a “day for Saudi liberals”. The website he set up has since been closed.
“Ruthless campaign”
Amnesty International describes him as a “prisoner of conscience” and has called for his release.
“Raif Badawi is the latest victim to fall prey to the ruthless campaign to silence peaceful activists in Saudi Arabia,” it said in a statement.
Last October a Saudi journalist was freed after spending a year and a half in prison for writing insulting tweets about the Prophet Muhammad.
Hamza Kashgari fled Saudi Arabia for Malaysia in 2012 but was extradited just days later. He was released last year after making a public apology.
Riyadh – Saudi women are prevented by male guardians from enjoying their basic rights, including travelling, working and getting married, the Human Rights Watch group said Monday.
“Saudi women often must obtain permission from a guardian (a father, husband, or even a son) to work, travel, study, marry or even access health care,” the New York-based group said.
A report, entitled Perpetual Minors: Human Rights Abuses Stemming from Male Guardianship and Sex Segregation in Saudi Arabia, draws on over 100 interviews with Saudi women to document the effect of discriminatory policies on women’s basic rights.
“The authorities essentially treat adult women like legal minors who are not entitled to authority over their lives and well-being,” the 50-page report said.
Saudi women are denied the right to access government agencies that have no female sections unless they have a male representative.
“The need to establish separate office spaces for women is a disincentive to hiring female employees, and female students are often relegated to unequal facilities with unequal academic opportunities,” the human rights group said.
In cases where permission of a male guardian is not required, government officials often ask for it.
Airport officials, for example, ask women over 45 for written permission from their guardians allowing them to travel despite a recent government’s exemption from this requirement.
A 40-year-old Saudi woman, whose name was given as Fatma A., told the group that she cannot board a plane without written permission from her son, who is her legal guardian.
“My son is 23 years old and has to come all the way from the Eastern Province to give me permission to leave the country,” Fatma said.
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that enforces a ban on women’s driving.
Women in the conservative kingdom have severely restricted access to justice and have difficulty filing a court case or testifying in court without a legal guardian.
Paradoxically, Saudi women have only limited rights to make decision for themselves but are held criminally “responsible for their actions at puberty,” the report said.
“For Saudi women, reaching adulthood brings no rights, only responsibilities,” said Farida Deif, women’s rights researcher for the Middle East at Human Rights Watch. (dpa)
Saudi Arabia has asked florists and gift shops to remove all red items until after Valentine’s Day, calling the celebration of such a holiday a sin, local media reported Monday.
“As Muslims we shouldn’t celebrate a non-Muslim celebration, especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women, ” Sheikh Khaled Al-Dossari, a scholar in Islamic studies, told the Saudi Gazette, an English-language newspaper.
Every year, officials with the conservative Muslim kingdom’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice clamp down on shops a few days before February 14, instructing them to remove red roses, red wrapping paper, gift boxes and teddy bears. On the eve of the holiday, they raid stores and seize symbols of love.
Ahmed Al-Omran, a university student in Riyadh, told CNN that the government decision will give the international media another reason to make fun of the Saudis “but I think that we got used to that by now.”
“I think what they are doing is ridiculous,” said Al-Omran, who maintains the blog ‘Saudi Jeans.’ “What the conservatives in this country need to learn is something called ‘tolerance.’ If they don’t see the permissibility of celebrating such an occasion, then fine — they should not celebrate it. But they have to know they have no right to impose their point of view on others.”
Because of the ban on red roses, a black market has flowered ahead of Valentine’s Day. Roses that normally go for five Saudi riyal ($1.30) fetch up to 30 riyal ($8) on February 14, the Saudi Gazette said.
“Sometimes we deliver the bouquets in the middle of the night or early morning, to avoid suspicion,” one florist told the paper.
Others were planning to travel to the more religiously liberal neighbouring countries, Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, to celebrate.
Saudi Arabian authorities impose a strict Islamic code that prevents men and women from mixing.
Islamic Myths 