From CDHR
February 21, 2008
Collective Punishment of Religious Minorities
By Ali Alyami
The Saudi-Wahhabi harsh religious-based policies are designed to create fear, divisiveness and unending conflicts among their severely controlled citizens. Women and religious minorities in all parts of Saudi Arabia are perpetual victims of vindictive and erratic government behavior and revenge against those who refuse to convert to their domestically, regionally and globally loathed brand of Islam, Wahhabism. While the state created and imposed the Wahhabi brand of Islam on all citizens and residents of the desolate Kingdom, no group is more victimized by its severe application than the estimated 500 thousand member Ismaeli religious minority in the agriculturally rich region of Najran, on the Saudi – Yemeni borders.
Historically, the people of Najran, Najranis, have acted as a deterrent force against Yemeni incursions to Saudi Arabia. In fact, the Najranis helped the Saudi royal family defeat the Yemenis and add Najran to its domain in 1934. After the annexation of this fertile and relatively peaceful region, the Saudi family started planting its ruthless religious Wahhabi fanatics among the Najranis by sheer force. They expropriated the indigenous people’s land, forced them into paying taxes, Zakat, to feed and house the new Wahhabi occupiers, and imposed Wahhabi religious courts on them. Tragically, the Wahhabis consider the Najranis to be heretics and apostates. Thus, they must be punished until they convert to Wahhabism or abide by its doctrine in silence. As fierce, proud and defiant tribesmen, the Najranis refused to succumb to the brutal Saudi-Wahhabi religious doctrine. Consequently, the Najranis pay a very high price. They are excluded from their country’s riches, good health care, social services, employment and clean water to drink. Mortality among Najranis is said to be the highest in the Saudi Kingdom.
In addition, the people of Najran are collectively punished because of what this human rights activist (born and raised in Najran) promotes: Religious freedom, empowerment of women, privatization of all pubic utilities, free elections and total transformation of all Saudi institutions.
Najranis have no defenders within or outside of Saudi Arabia. Their region is tucked far away in the foothills of the sprawling Saudi – Yemeni mountains in southern Saudi Arabia. The Saudi reporters hardly go to Najran for fear of government reprisal. In addition, the media is government owned and controlled and most reporters are from the majority Sunni population, some of whom share the Wahhabi religious resentment toward religious minorities. Even the Saudi governmental human rights organizations do not travel and investigate the mistreatment of their fellow citizens because of their religious bias. The head of the Saudi government’s National Human Rights Association, Mr. Turki al-Sudairy, admits his lack of knowledge of the plight of the people of Najran. Representatives of foreign embassies do not travel to Najran to see for themselves what kind of brutal conditions religious minorities incur because of their beliefs. This includes the U.S. embassy and consulates personnel in Saudi Arabia.
Having failed to subdue the Najranis and force them into embracing Wahhabism, the Saudi government is building permanent housing settlements for thousands of Sunni Yemeni immigrants around Najran to ensure the confinement of the Najranis in a quarantine-like fashion. But there is more to the story: Najran is close to the Yemeni region of Saadah, where a strong and fierce group of Yemeni religious minorities, Zeidi Muslims, reside. This group is religiously and tribally close to the Ismaelis of Najran, as both are offshoots of Shaism-Shiites. The Yemeni Zeidis are also oppressed by the tyrannical Sunni government in Yemen, who is the recipient of Saudi largess. The Zeidi group of Saadah has been fighting and inflicting death and destruction on the troops and property of the government of the close Saudi ally, Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen. The Saudi and Yemeni governments want to keep these groups separated and isolated for fear of future cooperation between the two oppressed minorities on both sides of the mountainous borders. This is partially the untold reason for building new settlements for Yemeni immigrants, which will further oppress and isolate the Najran population, a large segment of Saudi society. This reality belies the assertion by the Saudi government and clergymen that Islam (as practiced in Saudi Arabia) is a religion of peace and is tolerant of differences.