Founded | August 2014 [1] |
---|---|
Founder | Yahya Assiri [2] |
Focus | research and advocacy for human rights in Saudi Arabia [1] |
Location | |
Area served | Saudi Arabia [3] |
Method | researching human rights in Saudi Arabia based on Saudi Arabia based team and publishing documentation and news reports by London team; "lobbying against [human rights violations] using peaceful and legal methods" [3] |
Key people | Yahya Assiri [3] |
Website | alqst |
ALQST [1] [3] or Al Qst [2] (Arabic : منظمة القسط) is a human rights organisation that documents and promotes human rights in Saudi Arabia, with a team in Saudi Arabia that researches cases and a team in London that publishes reports and news. [1]
ALQST was founded in August 2014 by Yahya Assiri, a former Royal Saudi Air Force officer, [2] [4] with the aim of documenting human rights violations in Saudi Arabia and publishing reports on these. [1] Assiri described the choice of the name as deliberately using a term from the Quran that means "justice", in order to avoid the organisation being perceived as attacking Saudi Arabian culture. [2]
As of 2023, Lina al-Hathloul, the sister of Loujain al-Hathloul, is ALQST's head of monitoring [5] and advocacy. [6]
In February 2018, ALQST opposed the conviction and sentencing of Issa al-Nukheifi, who was sentenced to six years' imprisonment, to be followed by a six-year international travel ban and social media ban, for having tweeted his criticism of Saudi authorities for the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen and against official handling of "criminal proceedings and security procedures". [7]
ALQST has documented the detention of women's human rights activists, including the wave of arrests that started with the detention of Noha al-Balawi in January 2018, who was questioned during her detention for her women's rights activities. [8] Al-Balawi was the first in a 2018 wave of arrests of women's rights activists involved in the women to drive movement and the anti male-guardianship campaign. [9] ALQST described the series of arrests as an "unprecedented targeting of women human rights defenders" [9] while United Nations special rapporteurs called them a "crackdown". [10]
In August 2018, ALQST called for the dropping of charges against Israa al-Ghomgham, a human rights advocate especially known for her documentation of and participation in the Qatif unrest that started in 2011 and continued during 2017–18. [11] ALQST stated that the prosecutor in al-Ghomgham's case had requested that she be sentenced to death for what ALQST described as "her involvement in peaceful rights activism". [12]
In September 2018, ALQST reported that Salman al-Ouda, a Saudi Muslim scholar who had in 1993 co-founded the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, a Saudi opposition group, [13] risked the death penalty for lèse-majesté in a court case against him in the Specialized Criminal Court. [14]
In 2018, France 24 and ALQST reported on the use of Twitter and other online social networks by kafala system employers, "kafils", to "sell" migrant domestic workers to other kafils, in violation of Saudi law. ALQST described the online trading as "slavery 2.0". [15]
In October 2018, ALQST joined 160 other civil society organisations in calling for an independent international investigation into the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi and for Saudi Arabia to be suspended from the United Nations Human Rights Council. [9]
In its second annual conference in December 2018, ALQST released a report summarising the human rights situation during the reign of King Salman. ALQST described the beginning of the reign as a "period of repression unprecedented both in its scope and its range of methods, exceeding in intensity anything seen before in previous eras." ALQST listed human rights violations including "excessive use of armed force – including artillery – in a densely-populated residential area" during the 2017–19 Qatif unrest, the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, and the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. [16]
ALQST divided waves of arrests during 2017–2019 into three waves. [16] The 10 September 2017 arrests of Salman al-Ouda, Abdullah al-Maliki, Essam al-Zamel and other academics, intellectuals, media professionals and religious leaders constituted the first wave. The second wave was the 2017 Saudi Arabian purge that started on 4 November 2017, in which several hundred prominent Saudi Arabian princes, government ministers, and business people were detained. [17] [18] ALQST defined the third wave as the 2018 crackdown on women involved in the women to drive movement and the anti male-guardianship campaign and their male supporters. [16] The women were detained and several of them were tortured. [19] [20]
Human rights in Saudi Arabia are a topic of concern and controversy. Known for its executions of political protesters and opponents, the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been accused of and denounced by various international organizations and governments for violating human rights within the country. An absolute monarchy under the House of Saud, the government is consistently ranked among the "worst of the worst" in Freedom House's annual survey of political and civil rights and was in 2023 ranked as the world's most authoritarian regime.
Eman al-Nafjan is a Saudi Arabian blogger and women's rights activist. She was detained by Saudi authorities in May 2018 along with Loujain al-Hathloul and five other women's rights activists in what Human Rights Watch interpreted as an attempt to frighten the activists, during the 2018–2019 Saudi crackdown on feminists.
Until June 2018, Saudi Arabia was the only country in the world in which women were forbidden from driving motor vehicles. The Women to Drive Movement was a campaign by Saudi women, whom the government denies many rights to which men are entitled, for the right to drive motor vehicles on public roads. Dozens of women drove in Riyadh in 1990 and were arrested and had their passports confiscated. In 2007, Wajeha al-Huwaider and other women petitioned King Abdullah for the right to drive, and a film of al-Huwaider driving on International Women's Day 2008 attracted international media attention.
Dissidents have been detained as political prisoners in Saudi Arabia during the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s and earlier. Protests and sit-ins calling for political prisoners to be released took place during the 2011–2012 Saudi Arabian protests in many cities throughout Saudi Arabia, with security forces firing live bullets in the air on 19 August 2012 at a protest at al-Ha'ir Prison. As of 2012, recent estimates of the number of political prisoners in Mabahith prisons range from a denial of any political prisoners at all by the Ministry of Interior, to 30,000 by the UK-based Islamic Human Rights Commission and the BBC.
Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, commonly known by his initials as MBS or MbS, is the de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, formally serving as Crown Prince and Prime Minister. He is the heir apparent to the Saudi throne, the seventh son of King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and the grandson of the nation's founder, King Abdulaziz.
Loujain al-Hathloul is a Saudi women's rights activist, a social media figure, and political prisoner. She has been arrested on several occasions for defying the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia. In May 2018, she and several prominent women's rights activists were kidnapped in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and deported to Saudi Arabia where they were charged with "attempting to destabilise the kingdom." Her ex-husband, Saudi stand-up comedian Fahad al-Butairi, had also been forcibly returned from Jordan to the Kingdom and was under arrest.
The 2017–2020 Qatif unrest was a phase of conflict in the Qatif region of Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia, between Saudi security forces and the local Shia community, that arose sporadically starting in 1979, including a series of protests and repression during the 2011–12 Saudi Arabian protests.
The 2017–19 Saudi Arabian purge was the mass arrest of a number of prominent Saudi Arabian princes, government ministers, and business people in Saudi Arabia on 4 November 2017. It took place weeks after the creation of an anti-corruption committee led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Madeha al-Ajroush is a Saudi Arabian women's rights activist, psychologist and photographer. She was detained by Saudi authorities in May 2018 along with Loujain al-Hathloul and five other activists.
Aziza al-Yousef is a Saudi Arabian women's rights activist and academic. She was detained by Saudi authorities in May 2018 along with Loujain al-Hathloul and five others.
The anti male-guardianship campaign is an ongoing campaign by Saudi women against the requirement under the law to obtain permission from their male guardian for activities such as getting a job, travelling internationally or getting married. Wajeha al-Huwaider deliberately tried to travel internationally without male guardianship permission in 2009 and encouraged other women to do likewise. Women activists wrote a letter to the Saudi Minister of Labor and brought media attention to the issue in 2011. A 14,000-signature petition was given to royal authorities by Aziza al-Yousef in 2016 following a Human Rights Watch report on male guardianship. A crackdown against the activists took place in mid-May 2018, with 13 arrests as of 22 May 2018. Several of the women remained in prison as of December 2018. Some of the women activists were tortured, some of them in the supervision of Saud al-Qahtani, a close advisor of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.
The European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) is a Europe-based human rights organisation for documenting and promoting human rights in Saudi Arabia.
Nassima al-Sadah is a Shia human rights writer and activist from the "restive Shi'ite-majority" eastern province Qatif, Saudi Arabia. She has "campaigned for civil and political rights, women's rights and the rights of the Shi'a minority" in the eastern province Qatif, Saudi Arabia for many years. She ran as a candidate in the 2015 Saudi Arabian municipal elections but was disqualified. Sadah and another prominent activist, Samar Badawi, were arrested on July 30, 2018, by Saudi authorities in a broader "government crackdown" on "activists, clerics and journalists."
The 2018–2019 Saudi crackdown on feminists consisted of waves of arrests of women's rights activists in Saudi Arabia involved in the women to drive movement and the Saudi anti male-guardianship campaign and of their supporters during 2018 and 2019. The crackdown was described in June 2018 by a United Nations special rapporteur as taking place "on a wide scale across" Saudi Arabia; the special rapporteur called for the "urgent release" of the detainees. Six of the women arrestees were tortured, some in the presence of Crown Prince advisor Saud al-Qahtani.
Feminism in Saudi Arabia dates back to the ancient, pre-Roman Nabataean Kingdom in which women were independent legal persons. Twenty-first century feminist movements in Saudi Arabia include the women to drive movement and the anti male-guardianship campaign. Madawi al-Rasheed argued in 2019 that the Saudi feminist movement was "the most organised and articulate civil society" in Saudi Arabia.
The Human Right Commission is a Saudi government organization established on 12 September 2005 by the decision of the council of ministers. It claims to be independent of the Saudi government. The Commission states its aim as the protection and promotion of human rights in line with international standards.
The Saudi crackdown on Islamic scholars refers to a series of actions taken by the Saudi Arabian government against various prominent Islamic scholars and thinkers within the country. The crackdown began in late 2017 and has continued to the present day, with many scholars being arrested and jailed, while others have been banned from speaking or writing.
Salma al-Shehab is a Saudi Arabian student and prisoner of conscience who was sentenced to 27 years in prison by the Specialized Criminal Court in what has been cited as the longest prison sentence ever given to a human rights activist in Saudi Arabia. While al-Shehab's initial six-year sentence received relatively little press, her resentencing in August 2022 received international attention and led to criticism of the Saudi Arabian government.
Awad bin Mohammed Al-Qarni is a prominent reformist law professor in Saudi Arabia who was arrested and condemned to death for offenses including using a Twitter account and WhatsApp to share messages deemed "hostile" to the kingdom.
Lina al-Hathloul is a Saudi human rights activist and the sister of Loujain al-Hathloul, the women's rights activist and political prisoner.