There are important strategic issues on the agenda for King Abdullah's visit to the UK next week: the Middle East peace process, energy security, terrorism and bilateral commercial relations. But what about good governance and human rights?
October 23, 2007
There are important strategic issues on the agenda for King Abdullah's visit to the UK next week: the Middle East peace process, energy security, terrorism and bilateral commercial relations. But what about good governance and human rights?
Saudi Arabia's strategic and commercial importance to the UK has until now silenced criticism the kingdom's internal affairs by British leaders. Earlier this year the UK government dropped its enquiry into fraud in the al-Yamamah arms sale to Saudi Arabia by BAE citing potential damage to the UK's "national security and our highest priority foreign policy objectives in the Middle East." In 2006, the UK government defended the immunity of Saudi government officials sued in a British court by four Britons arrested on false charges and tortured in Saudi Arabia in 2000.
Is it not time for a government which trumpets the injection of "ethics" and "values" into foreign policy to change its see-no-evil approach to Saudi Arabia?
When pressed, UK officials say there has been progress on political reform in Saudi Arabia over recent years. However, reform has been more cosmetic than real. The media is more outspoken, but no law or court protects journalists fired or imprisoned for their work. Women are more visible in public life, but still carry a yellow card with their male guardian's permission for travel. The government even allowed Human Rights Watch researchers into the country last year for the first time, but then blocked access to prisons and courts.
The human rights climate remains, in a word, oppressive. This year the government imprisoned academics supporting the rule of law and critics of the regime in addition to thousands of individuals they categorise as "security detainees" because they are allegedly involved in the Iraq insurgency.
Saudi Arabia claims to rule exclusively by the precepts of Islamic law, but unaccountable rulers decide its shifting interpretation. Alleged jihadis in the intelligence prisons are subject to religious "re-education" instead of a fair trial.
Earlier this month the Saudi government announced a major judicial "overhaul", promising a new supreme court, more appeals courts, and specialised courts for commercial, personal status, labour and traffic disputes. These reforms may make the Saudi justice system more efficient, but will they make it more just?
There is currently no rule of law in Saudi Arabia. Reform should mean stating the law clearly and applying it equally. Arbitrary arrests of jihadi sympathisers and dissidents have fuelled radicalisation. Recent cases illustrate the problems of a system which still lacks both a written penal code to define what is and is not a criminal offence and rules of precedence. Instead, procedures are subject to the judge's whims:
Two of the country's leading reformers, the brothers Abdullah and Isa al-Hamid, are currently on trial for promoting a peaceful public demonstration. They were arrested in July after a demonstration in front of Buraida's intelligence prison by a group of women protesting the imprisonment of their relatives for years without trial. When intelligence forces came to arrest one of the women, Abdullah al-Hamid, the lawyer for the woman's detained husband, demanded to see an arrest warrant, as Saudi law requires. Their response was to throw him and his brother in jail.
In January 2007, a court finalised the forced divorce of Fatima al-Azzaz from her husband, Mansur al-Timani. Her half-brothers had filed for her divorce, claiming that al-Timani tribal roots made him socially inferior. Even though the courts decision did not require it, the government punished the couple by forcibly separating them and their two children. They arrested al-Timani until he pledged not to speak to anyone about his enforced divorce and locked Fatima up with her infant son, denying any visits between the couple.
A judge recently sentenced a 19-year-old rape victim to 90 lashes for illegally mingling with the other sex. In another case, innocent family members of a man beaten to death by the religious police found themselves locked up for a week. In another, two Indonesian domestic workers whose employers beat them to within an inch of their lives were removed from hospital intensive care by police investigating them for witchcraft.
Time and again women, religious minorities, political activists and foreigners fall victim to the capricious moods of Saudi judges and their government backers. Injecting justice into the Saudi judiciary requires more than just specialised courts. It requires a solid basis for justice, including a penal code to set out precisely which acts the Sharia and the Saudi government deem to be criminal.
Such a code should comply with human rights law and not criminalise peaceful exercise of basic rights. It should also lay down clear sentencing guidelines, instead of the present system whereby Saudi judges have complete discretion to determine the sentence for most crimes.
The UK should revisit its policy of turning its back on the many Saudis who are pushing for the rule of law against an absolute monarchy in their country. King Abdullah's visit to London this week is a good place to start.
