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Saudi Arabia launches first anti-domestic violence campaign

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:46:00 +0000

According to the World Economic Forum, Saudi Arabia ranks 131st out of 135 countries on gender parity and opportunities for women. Progress in the country has been slow, but local feminists and other women's rights groups have continued to agitate for more representation in the Saudi government, increased mobility in their day-to-day lives and other egalitarian gains in a country where women are still legally considered minors and require permission from male guardians for simple things like travel and work.

But the culture is changing, albeit slowly. Close on the heels of a law allowing women to ride bicycles in "enclosed areas" for "recreational purposes," two female Saudi Olympians competing in London and the swearing-in of 30 female members of the Shura Council comes a new anti-domestic violence campaign. The very first of its kind in Saudi Arabia.

The "No More Abuse" campaign is sponsored by the nonprofit King Khalid Foundation, and is intended to raise awareness about available resources for women and children experiencing violence in their homes and families. The ads depict a woman wearing a hijab but with a clearly visible black eye, and the Arabic text roughly translates to "The tip of the iceberg." An English language version reads: "Some things can't be covered."

Is Saudi Arabia deporting men for being too handsome?

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:11:00 +0000

According to a recent Time Magazine report, three men were deported from Saudi Arabia for being "too handsome."

Now The Telegraph is weighing in, explaining:

A statement in Arabic-language newspaper Elaph, translated by The Telegraph, added, "A festival official said the three Emiratis were taken out on the grounds they are too handsome and that the Commission [for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vices] members feared female visitors could fall for them.

The right’s new Boston conspiracy theory

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:55:00 +0000

Were you one of the pundits or newspapers who too quickly jumped on the Saudi "person of interest" story, only to have some egg on your face when authorities later cleared him of wrongdoing? Well, thankfully, Fox News' favorite "terrorism expert" Steve Emerson has found an escape clause.

Emerson, a former journalist who has since made a career out of being a self-styled expert, was himself a little too credulous on the New York Post-boosted story line about the Saudi national, telling C-SPAN Tuesday morning that based on "certain classified information" that he was "privy to," he was pretty sure authorities had found their man in "the Saudi national." But six hours later, on Fox, he broke the news that "the Saudi suspect has been ruled out."

Boston aftermath brings out America’s worst prejudices

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:53:00 +0000

For a country that so often purports to be color blind, that insists too many people of color are overly obsessed with race, and that claims to live up to Dr. King's dream of not judging people "by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," the last two days have revealed a much uglier reality. They have revealed that -- "doth protest too much" claims to the contrary -- America is anything but color blind, that too many white folk are the ones obsessed with race, and that Dr. King's dream is still just that: a distant dream. And that's not just a general truism that is irrelevant to this moment of national emergency -- it is, on the contrary, a very specific point that must be made, right now, precisely because of that national emergency.

After Boston explosions, a scapegoat emerges on the right

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 23:36:00 +0000

Should we even be surprised that after an event like the bombing of the Boston Marathon today, immediate suspicion would turn to Muslims? Muslims themselves were not. “The thought of every Muslim right now," tweeted Dubai-based Al-Aan TV journalist Jenan Moussa: “Please don’t be a ‘Muslim.'”

It's easiest to explain unexplainable -- or yet unknown -- things by forcing them into an existing worldview, so when a shred of evidence came along, such as an unsubstantiated New York Post report that police had detained a Saudi national, many on the right immediately took it and ran with it.

Of course, the Post's report -- which Fox News picked up -- has zero named sources, zero quotes, and was contradicted by the Boston commissioner, who said authorities have no suspects in custody yet, but why let that get in the way of what you're sure is true.

Saudi Arabia lifts ban on women riding bicycles

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:54:00 +0000

Women in Saudi Arabia are still banned from driving cars (among other things), but the kingdom's religious police are now allowing them to ride motorbikes and bicycles in certain parks and recreational areas. The catch? A male relative or guardian must accompany women riders, according to Saudi news outlet Al-Yawm.

As reported by the Associated Press:

The Al-Yawm daily on Monday cited an unnamed official from the powerful religious police as saying women can ride bikes in parks and recreational areas but they have to be accompanied by a male relative and dressed in the full Islamic head-to-toe abaya.

Saudi Arabia follows an ultraconservative interpretation of Islam and bans women from driving. Women are also banned from riding motorcycles or bicycles in public places. The newspaper didn't say what triggered the lifting of the ban.

Short on swordsmen, Saudi Arabia may execute by firing squad

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:05:00 +0000

Saudi Arabia has received criticism from the international community for its practice of carrying out public beheadings. But now a government committee is considering whether to conduct executions by firing squad, due to a lack of capable government swordsmen, reports Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram.

The committee argued that such a step, if adopted, would not violate Islamic law, allowing heads – or emirs – of the country's 13 local administrative regions to begin using the new method when needed.

"This solution seems practical, especially in light of shortages in official swordsmen or their belated arrival to execution yards in some incidents; the aim is to avoid interruption of the regularly-taken security arrangements," the committee said in a statement.

The ultra-conservative Gulf kingdom beheaded 76 people in 2012, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Human Rights Watch (HRW) put the number at 69.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia's strict version of Sharia, or Islamic Law. So far this year, three people have been executed.

Saudi, Yemen under fire for child executions

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 17:39:00 +0000

Two of the United States' closest allies in the Middle East -- Yemen and Saudi Arabia -- have come under fire Monday from international human rights groups over the execution of juveniles offenders.

According to Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia is scheduled to execute seven men on Tuesday for crimes committed when they were under 18-years-old. The men, sentenced to death in 2009 for armed robbery, have been "beaten, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, forced to remain standing for 24 hours and then forced to sign 'confessions'," according to Amnesty.

As Reuters noted, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a 2006 report that it was "deeply alarmed" at the imposition of capital punishment by Saudi judges for crimes committed before the age of 18.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has decried the executions in recent years in Yemen of 15 male and female offenders aged under 18 when they committed their offenses. "The New-York-based group also called on the president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to reverse the execution orders of three juveniles on death row, whose appeals have been exhausted," the Guardian reported.

America’s idiotic drone gamble

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 18:08:00 +0000

You could, of course, sit there, slack-jawed, thinking about how mindlessly repetitive American foreign and military policy is these days. Or you could wield all sorts of fancy analytic words to explain it. Or you could just settle for a few simple, all-American ones. Like dumb. Stupid. Dimwitted. Thick-headed. Or you could speak about the second administration in a row that wanted to leave no child behind, but was itself incapable of learning, or reasonably assessing its situation in the world.

Or you could simply wonder what’s in Washington’s water supply. Last week, after all, there was a perfect drone storm of a story, only a year or so late -- and no, it wasn’t that leaked “white paper” justifying the White House-directed assassination of an American citizen; and no, it wasn’t the two secret Justice Department “legal” memos on the same subject that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee were allowed to “view,” but in such secrecy that they couldn’t even ask John O. Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism tsar and choice for CIA director, questions about them at his public nomination hearings; and no, it wasn’t anything that Brennan, the man who oversaw the White House “kill list” and those presidentially chosen drone strikes, said at the hearings. And here’s the most striking thing: it should have set everyone’s teeth on edge, yet next to nobody even noticed.

UN: Execution of 17-year-old domestic worker broke international law

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 19:00:00 +0000

GENEVA (AP) — U.N. human rights experts say Saudi Arabia broke international law by beheading a Sri Lankan domestic worker accused of killing a Saudi baby in her care in 2005.

The U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, said Friday that it "is clear that it is unlawful to execute someone who was under 18 years old when they allegedly committed a crime."

On Wednesday, the Saudi Interior Ministry said Rizana Nafeek was given a death sentence and executed, despite appeals by the Sri Lanka government for a reprieve. The domestic worker had denied strangling the 4-month-old boy, who died when she was 17 years old.

Groups such as Human Rights Watch strongly condemned the execution. Heyns also said that "beheading is a particularly cruel form of execution."

Cleric “gang rape” story debunked

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:32:00 +0000

Salon re-published a story Wednesday from one of our partner sites, AlterNet, with the headline "Saudi religious leader calls for gang rape of Syrian women." The story reported that cleric Sheikh Mohammad Al-Arifi had urged Syrian fighters to satisfy their sexual urges in "short-term marriages" as a means of boosting morale in their fight against the Assad regime. AlterNet has since retracted the story, saying it was "based on a false report," and published an explanation for how a story so flawed could be published. Salon has removed the story from our archives, and regrets running the original story.

Party king Andrew W.K.’s un-invitation

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 19:25:00 +0000

Rock star and self-styled party king Andrew W.K. set the Internet alight with chatter last week when he revealed that he was invited to the U.S. Embassy in Bahrain to participate in a cultural exchange. But Noel Clay, a spokesperson from the State Department, said via phone that the invitation has been rescinded.

Calling it "a mistake and not appropriate," Clay said the program has been canceled.

The initial invitation sparked an outcry among human rights observers. The Bahraini monarchy has been roundly criticized for a sustained violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations that began in 2011.

The government, led by King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, is supported by Saudi Arabia, which is connected to the diminutive oil-rich island nation via causeway, and the United States, whose fifth fleet is stationed there.

What won’t be discussed during tonight’s debate

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 15:15:00 +0000

We had a debate club back in high school. Two teams would meet in the auditorium, and Mr. Garrity would tell us the topic, something 1970s-ish like “Resolved: Women Should Get Equal Pay for Equal Work” or “World Communism Will Be Defeated in Vietnam.” Each side would then try, through persuasion and the marshalling of facts, to clinch the argument. There’d be judges and a winner.

Today’s presidential debates are a long way from Mr. Garrity’s club. It seems that the first rule of the debate club now is: no disagreeing on what matters most. In fact, the two candidates rarely interact with each other at all, typically ditching whatever the question might be for some rehashed set of campaign talking points, all with the complicity of the celebrity media moderators preening about democracy in action. Waiting for another quip about Big Bird is about all the content we can expect.

But the joke is on us. Sadly, the two candidates are stand-ins for Washington in general, a “war” capital whose denizens work and argue, sometimes fiercely, from within a remarkably limited range of options. It was D.C. on autopilot last week for domestic issues; the next two presidential debates are to be in part or fully on foreign policy challenges (of which there are so many). When it comes to foreign -- that is, military -- policy, the gap between Barack and Mitt is slim to the point of nonexistent on many issues, however much they may badger each other on the subject. That old saw about those who fail to understand history repeating its mistakes applies a little too easily here: the last 11 years have added up to one disaster after another abroad, and without a smidgen of new thinking (guaranteed not to put in an appearance at any of the debates to come), we doom ourselves to more of the same.

YouTube blocks anti-Islam film in Saudi

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 12:18:00 +0000

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — YouTube said Tuesday that it had blocked users in Saudi Arabia from viewing an anti-Islam video that has sparked protests across the Muslim world, after the kingdom’s press agency reported that the ruler had blocked all access to the film.

The online video sharing site said that it was preventing “Innocence of Muslims” from being seen on its site in Saudi Arabia after being notified by the government there that the clip is breaking the country’s laws.

Google Inc., YouTube’s owner, has blocked access to the video in Libya and Egypt following violence there, and in Indonesia and India because it says the video broke laws in those countries.

The Saudi Press Agency said that the kingdom had sent a request to Google to “veil” all links containing the video, which was produced in the United States and which ridicules the Prophet Muhammad.

The agency said King Abdullah had directed that all websites and links that accessed the video should be blocked. An Associated Press reporter in Saudi Arabia reported that the online video sharing site was inaccessible that evening.