Saudi Arabia is currently promoting the Saudi Green Initiative under which it plans to plant some 10 billion trees in order to “rehabilitate 40 million hectares of land and restore Saudi Arabia’s natural greenery.“
With the world’s current focus on climate change, such an initiative will create the impression of a modern, forward thinking and environmentally responsible nation.
Politically this is a smart move, clearly designed to portray the Kingdom as being in tune with western norms and values.
Perhaps even to focus attention away from Saudi Arabia’s appalling human rights record.
Garamendi also raised the unresolved question of Saudi complicity, alleged or otherwise, in the 9/11 attacks as described in a December 2002 joint Senate-House intelligence committee report.
Saudi Arabia: A litany of Human Rights abuses.
On December 10th 1948 Saudi Arabia, along with the Soviet Union, South Africa, and others of that ilk, abstained from the vote adopting the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the grounds that the declaration contradicted sharia law.
Saudi Arabia to this day has failed to ratify 10 protocols in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10th 1966.
These protocols include those pertaining to the rights of women, the rights of children, freedom of religion, and abolition of the death penalty.
In Saudi Arabia, in the 21st century, one can still be executed for witchcraft.
In December 2011, Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser was beheaded in the northern province of Jawf.
She was the second women to be executed for witchcraft in that year, bringing the annual total of executions on all charges in 2011 to 73.
Many of those executed have had no defence lawyer and are not informed about the legal proceedings against them, according to Amnesty International.
In 2012 Muree bin Ali bin Issa al-Asiri was beheaded for possession of talismans.
No details were given of exactly what he was found guilty of beyond the charges of witchcraft and sorcery.
He has been imprisoned since August 2014, has reportedly been tortured, and has been charged for organising – when he was still a minor – a terrorist cell.
Mass executions are not uncommon in Saudi Arabia: the current record is 81, executed in March 2022.
The total number of executions in the current year reached the 100 mark in September.
Public beheading, particularly of women, appears to be something of a spectator sport in Saudi Arabia.
Executions are held in major towns and cities in the Kingdom, usually on a Friday after noon prayers, in a square in front of the Provincial Governor’s palace.
Married women convicted of adultery may also be executed by stoning to death, however the last reported stoning of a woman was in 1992.
The amputation of hands as a punishment for theft remains permissible under Sharia law, but is rarely practised.
Modern Day Slavery in Saudi Arabia.
Modern day slavery and forced labour are an everyday part of life in bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia.
The 2023 Global Slavery Index (GSI) estimates that on any given day in 2021, there were 740,000 individuals living in modern slavery in Saudi Arabia.
According to GSI this equates to a prevalence of 21.3 people in modern slavery for every thousand people in the country.
Leaving the workplace without permission is an offence that results in the termination of the worker’s legal status and potentially imprisonment.
Saudi Arabia has the highest prevalence of such practices of 11 countries in the Arab States region, and has the fourth highest prevalence out of 160 countries globally.
Saudi Arabia removed from the UN Human Rights Council.
Read also: Jamal Khashoggi, 5 years on: “Biden administration must urgently address pressing human rights issues in Saudi Arabia”
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