"As National Security Advisor Susan Rice admitted in a December speech: "Let's be honest: At times, as a result, we do business with governments that do not respect the rights we hold most dear. We make tough choices." It appears U.S. officials have weighed the economic and geostrategic aspects of the relationship with the kingdom, and effectively told Saudi activists to go to the back of the line.
Saudi Arabia carried out dozens of executions in 2013. The vast majority were public beheadings, including the gruesome beheading of five Yemeni men for murder and armed robbery in May and public display of their decapitated bodies in the southern town of Jizan.
Authorities continued to treat women as legal minors, preventing them from making important life decisions -- such as leaving the country, undertaking higher education, or undergoing certain medical procedures -- without the approval of a male guardian. When dozens of Saudi women got behind the wheel to assert their right to drive cars on October 26, authorities pulled some of them over and forced them to sign pledges not to do it again. Two women in the Eastern Province were convicted by a Saudi court of "inciting a woman against her husband" for trying to help a woman who said she had been locked in her home without adequate food.
In November, Saudi Arabia resumed a campaign to detain and expel hundreds of thousands of undocumented foreign workers. Many expelled workers reported terrible prison conditions while awaiting deportation, including overcrowding, beatings, and lack of food and water. Ethiopian workers in Riyadh told me stories of physical assaults by Saudi citizens, which police failed to stop, or in which they actively participated.
Independent activists have felt the repressive weight of the unfair justice system and harsh policies of the Saudi Interior Ministry in 2013. The kingdom persecuted activists in an attempt to stem criticism in social media and on news and analysis websites. In addition to convicting eight prominent human rights defenders, many of them in unfair trials, the authorities have attempted to silence and intimidate dozens of others with travel bans, smear campaigns, and threats to investigate and prosecute them for peaceful activities. In the absence of a written penal code or of narrowly worded criminal regulations, judges and prosecutors can criminalize a wide range of offenses under broad, catch-all categories such as "breaking allegiance with the ruler" or "trying to distort the reputation of the kingdom.""
Saudi Arabia carried out dozens of executions in 2013. The vast majority were public beheadings, including the gruesome beheading of five Yemeni men for murder and armed robbery in May and public display of their decapitated bodies in the southern town of Jizan.
Authorities continued to treat women as legal minors, preventing them from making important life decisions -- such as leaving the country, undertaking higher education, or undergoing certain medical procedures -- without the approval of a male guardian. When dozens of Saudi women got behind the wheel to assert their right to drive cars on October 26, authorities pulled some of them over and forced them to sign pledges not to do it again. Two women in the Eastern Province were convicted by a Saudi court of "inciting a woman against her husband" for trying to help a woman who said she had been locked in her home without adequate food.
In November, Saudi Arabia resumed a campaign to detain and expel hundreds of thousands of undocumented foreign workers. Many expelled workers reported terrible prison conditions while awaiting deportation, including overcrowding, beatings, and lack of food and water. Ethiopian workers in Riyadh told me stories of physical assaults by Saudi citizens, which police failed to stop, or in which they actively participated.
Independent activists have felt the repressive weight of the unfair justice system and harsh policies of the Saudi Interior Ministry in 2013. The kingdom persecuted activists in an attempt to stem criticism in social media and on news and analysis websites. In addition to convicting eight prominent human rights defenders, many of them in unfair trials, the authorities have attempted to silence and intimidate dozens of others with travel bans, smear campaigns, and threats to investigate and prosecute them for peaceful activities. In the absence of a written penal code or of narrowly worded criminal regulations, judges and prosecutors can criminalize a wide range of offenses under broad, catch-all categories such as "breaking allegiance with the ruler" or "trying to distort the reputation of the kingdom.""
