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.
Safar ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Hawali is a Saudi Islamic scholar who lives in Mecca. He came to prominence in 1991, as a leader of the Sahwah movement which opposed the presence of US troops on the Arabian Peninsula. In 1993, al-Hawali and Salman al-Ouda were leaders in creating the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, a group that opposed the Saudi government, for which both were imprisoned from 1994 to 1999.
The Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights was a Saudi dissident group created in 1993 which opposed the Saudi government as un-Islamic.
Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al-Sheikh is a Saudi Arabian scholar who is the current Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia. As such he is head of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars and its sub-committee, the Permanent Committee for Islamic Research and Issuing Fatwas.
Salman bin Fahd bin Abdullah al-Ouda or Salman al-Ouda, Salman al-Oadah, Salman al-Audah, or Salman al-Awdah - kunya: Abu Mu'ad - is a Saudi Islamic scholar. Al-Ouda is a member of the International Union for Muslim Scholars and on its board of trustees. He is a director of the Arabic edition of the website Islam Today and appears on a number of TV shows and authors newspaper articles.
Shaykh Dr. Aaidh ibn Abdullah al-Qarni, is a Saudi Islamic scholar, author, and activist.
The protests in Saudi Arabia were part of the Arab Spring that started with the 2011 Tunisian revolution. Protests started with a self-immolation in Samtah and Jeddah street protests in late January 2011. Protests against anti-Shia discrimination followed in February and early March in Qatif, Hofuf, al-Awamiyah, and Riyadh. A Facebook organiser of a planned 11 March "Day of Rage", Faisal Ahmed Abdul-Ahad, was allegedly killed by Saudi security forces on 2 March, with several hundred people protesting in Qatif, Hofuf and al-Amawiyah on the day itself. Khaled al-Johani demonstrated alone in Riyadh, was interviewed by BBC Arabic Television, was detained in ʽUlaysha Prison, and became known online as "the only brave man in Saudi Arabia". Many protests over human rights took place in April 2011 in front of government ministry buildings in Riyadh, Ta'if and Tabuk and in January 2012 in Riyadh. In 2011, Nimr al-Nimr encouraged his supporters in nonviolent resistance.
Ayatollah Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, commonly referred to as Sheikh Nimr, was a Shia sheikh from Al-Awamiyah in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. His arrest and execution were widely condemned by various governments and human rights organizations.
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.
Muhammad bin Abdul-Rahman Al-Arifi is a Saudi Arabian author and Da'i. He is a graduate of King Saud University, and member of the Muslim World League and the Association of Muslim Scholars.
Sahwa movement or al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya was a movement in Saudi Arabia from 1960–1980 which advocated for eradicating Wahhabi principles in Saudi society and replacing it with Qutbism. The most noticeable effects of the movement were significant restrictions on women's rights, religious freedom, and personal liberties. The movement's core doctrines were shaped by the fundamentalist tenets of Qutbism; such as theological denunciations of democracy and the belief that contemporary governments of the Muslim World have apostatised.
The following lists events that happened in 2016 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Ghanem Humood al-Masarir al-Dosari is a London-based Saudi human rights activist and a popular political satirist. He hosts an online talk show named the Ghanem Show, which features segments such as "Fadfada" where he criticizes the Saudi royal family through the use of black comedy.
The Qatif conflict is a modern phase of sectarian tensions and violence in Eastern Arabia between Arab Shia Muslims and Arab Sunni majority, which has ruled Saudi Arabia since early 20th century. The conflict encompasses civil unrest which has been sporadically happened since the 1979 uprising, pro-democracy and pro-human rights protests and occasional armed incidents, which increased in 2017 as part of the 2017–20 Qatif unrest.
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.
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.
Sheikh Fahd Al-Qadi was a Saudi Arabian Islamic scholar, judge and academic who died in the prison due to acute pneumonia. He was associated with the Sahwa movement and Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice Alumnus of Imam Muhammad ibn Saud University.
On 12 March 2022, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia carried out the mass execution of 81 men, including 7 Yemenis, 1 Syrian and 37 Saudi nationals on terrorism related charges and for holding deviant beliefs. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights understood that 41 were minority Shia Muslims who had participated in anti-government demonstrations calling for greater political participation in 2011–2012. Rights groups accused the government of adopting restrictive regulations against religious expression and political beliefs, as well as criticising its use of the death sentence, even for children arrested, and citing the execution as a violation of human rights.
Dr. Awad ibn Muhammed al-Qarni, is a Saudi Islamic Muslim scholar, author, and activist. He is known for his criticism of secularism and modernity and advocacy of conservative Islamic views. He was arrested in 2017 on charges of Promoting extremist ideas. In January 2023, it was announced that Saudi prosecutors were seeking the death penalty in his case.
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.
