Saudi Arabia Blocks Promised Access to Prisons
Dr. Ali Alyami
Center’s Comment: When a delegation from Human Rights Watch (HRW) traveled to Saudi Arabia in December 2006, the delegates were told prior to their trip that they would have access to the country’s numerous prison facilities. However, when the delegates arrived in Saudi Arabia, they were denied access and told that they couldn’t speak with any prisoners because the guards were the only ones who could authorize such visits. This should not have come as a surprise to anyone who knows anything about Saudi methods. Arbitrary arrests, interrogations and verdicts based on the moods of Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naif and religious judges are commonplace. However, the question a person should ask is: Why would the Saudi authorities object to human rights groups’ visits to Saudi prisons? The reason is fear that prisoners might risk their lives and tell visitors the truth about what happens to them when Naif’s notorious secret and religious police descend on citizens and expatriates in the middle of the night, and take them to the basement of the Interior Ministry or religious interrogation stations. According to some prisoners and their relatives, captured prisoners are taken to interrogation centers and get exposed to heinous physical treatment, including sexual abuse.
The Saudi government and its controlled media try to project the Saudi system as a tolerant and merciful Islamic system that does no wrong and treats people fairly and with respect. After the HRW visit, former Saudi ambassador to the US Prince Turki Al-Faisal, told The Daily Princetonian that, “Just recently the Kingdom invited a group from Human Rights Watch, which is a humanitarian organization dealing with human rights, to visit the Kingdom, and gave them the freedom to engage with all aspects of the Kingdom including visits to prisons and prisoners, meeting whoever they wanted without monitoring or any overseers” (Saudi Arabia Blocks Promised Access to Prisons, December 18, 2006, Human Rights Watch). This statement by Prince Turki Al-Faisal is the typical twisting of the truth by Saudi officials when speaking to an audience who will take such pronouncements at face value. The HRW delegation was denied access to many buildings, were unable to speak with prisoners, and when they were allowed into certain places, they saw signs of recent manipulation by the Saudi government.
What HRW and other NGO groups don’t seem to understand is that even if people are tortured and molested, they are unlikely to tell their stories to anyone including their families for fear of more torture, life long imprisonment, and lack of employment or constant harassment when released from the daunting Saudi prisons. While the intent and actions of human rights NGOs are noble and worthy of recognition and admiration, these groups may do more for people whether in small cells, or larger prisons like the Saudi state, by pushing for non-sectarian constitutions, accountability, transparency, empowerment of women and isolation of the Saudi government and others like it, until it openly embraces the International Declarations on Human rights and respect for the universal laws that curtail government abuse.
The Saudi royal family never fails to fool the West. Allowing human rights organizations to visit the country’s prisons while denying them access to prisoners is a good example of typical Saudi manipulation of law abiding, democratic societies. These and other Saudi ploys will continue as long as they have oil, lots of money and apologists in the West who are ready to validate Saudi actions by declaring the Saudi people unworthy of, or ill-prepared for, democracy and protection of their basic human rights by the rule of law.
No one should expect the Saudi royal family and its personalized and “make rules as you wish and see fit as you go” religious judicial system to comply with human rights standards unless the world is willing to hold the Saudi government accountable for its actions.
The Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia calls upon democratic Governments to acknowledge the human rights violations in Saudi Arabia, hold the royal family accountable for its actions, and work with Saudi reformers to put an end to these blatant violations.