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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.
Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi was a Saudi journalist, dissident, author, columnist for Middle East Eye and The Washington Post, and a general manager and editor-in-chief of Al-Arab News Channel who was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 by agents of the Saudi government at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The Ministry of Interior and General Investigation, commonly known simply as the Mabahith, is the secret police agency of the Presidency of State Security in Saudi Arabia, and deals with domestic security and counter-intelligence.
Multiple forms of media including books, newspapers, magazines, films, television, and content published on the Internet are censored in Saudi Arabia.
According to the British government, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have long been close allies. Relations between the two countries date back to 1848, when Faisal bin Turki, ruler of the Second Saudi state, formally requested the support of the British Political Resident in Bushire for his representative in Trucial Oman.
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.
Mohamed Soltan is an Egyptian American human rights advocate and former political prisoner in Egypt.
Middle East Eye (MEE) is a UK-based news website founded in 2014, that covers the Middle East and North Africa. It is funded by the government of Qatar.
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 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.
ALQST or Al Qst 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.
Salah Mohammed Abdah Al Tubaigy, also spelled Tubaiqi, is a Saudi forensic doctor. He was the head of the Saudi Scientific Council of Forensics and a colonel in the armed forces of Saudi Arabia.
On 2 October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident journalist, was killed by agents of the Saudi government at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Khashoggi was ambushed and strangled by a 15-member squad of Saudi operatives. His body was dismembered and disposed of in some way that was never publicly revealed. The consulate had been secretly bugged by the Turkish government and Khashoggi's final moments were captured in audio recordings, transcripts of which were subsequently made public.
The Tiger Squad, also known as UNIT 1103, and officially called the Rapid Intervention Force, is a protective security unit under the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. According to an unnamed source interviewed by the London-based online news outlet Middle East Eye following the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 and a BBC source inside Saudi Arabia who has a relative in the squad, it is a Saudi team that consists of approximately one-hundred fifty Saudi officers.
Saud bin Abdullah al-Qahtani is a Saudi Arabian consultant and former royal court advisor. Prior to his dismissal in late 2018, he worked as an advisor to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Walid Fitaihi is a Saudi-American physician and a motivational speaker on Saudi television. In November 2017, a decade after returning from study and work in the United States, Fitaihi was arrested by Saudi authorities and taken to the Ritz Carlton hotel as part of the 2017–19 Saudi Arabian purge, together with many prominent prisoners. He was later moved to al-Hair prison, south of the capital, and released only in August 2019.
The assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident, journalist for The Washington Post and former general manager and editor-in-chief of Al-Arab News Channel, occurred on 2 October 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and was denounced by the majority of the international community.
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.
Omar Abdulaziz Al-Zahrani is a Saudi Arabian dissident video blogger and activist living in exile in Montreal, Canada. As recounted in the film The Dissident (2020), he was close friends and worked with Jamal Khashoggi, dissident Saudi journalist assassinated by Saudi government agents at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Al-Zahrani is a member of the National Assembly Party.
In 2014 and 2015, a team of Saudi agents allegedly stole proprietary and sensitive personal data from the American social media platform Twitter, in order to unmask anonymous dissidents of Saudi Arabia. Email addresses, phone numbers, internet IP addresses, dates of birth and a history of all the users' activity of Saudi dissidents, opponents and others, were among the stolen materials.
References
- ↑ "Saudi Arabia's war on journalism". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 14 February 2019.
- ↑ "Saudi journalist tortured to death in prison". Middle East Monitor. 5 November 2018. Retrieved 14 February 2019.
- ↑ "Khashoggi's killing is not the only crime". Middle East Eye. Retrieved 14 February 2019.
- ↑ "Twitter 'gave Saudi Arabia information about journalist who ended up dead'". Metro. 9 November 2018. Retrieved 28 February 2019.