SHAFAQNA- Leading rights group Amnesty International in a new report has slammed Saudi Arabia for what it calls crackdown on dissident voices including women activists, rights campaigners, Shia and Sunni religious clerics and anti-regime protesters.
“Saudi Arabia’s year of shame” was released on the first anniversary of the arrest of several women activists. The report has detailed the arbitrary detention, persecution, unfair trials and sexual harassment all used by authorities against women activists.
According to the body, activists and rights defenders have suffered the terrible ordeal of detention while they have been unable to see their beloved ones and had no access to legal representation. Amnesty added that women activists who went under torture, ill-treatment and sexual abuse are now facing long jail terms. That is in addition to the arrest of over a dozen journalists, writers, academics and members of detained women’s families.
Amnesty International also touched on the Public Prosecution’s call for the execution of religious clerics and Shia opposition figures who are on trial on so-called terrorism charges while they were exercising their peaceful right to freedoms of expression, association and assembly. Sunni clerics such as Sheikh Salman al-Awda have been targeted by the kingdom’s security apparatus for what the regime claims his links with the Muslim Brotherhood and calls for political reforms.
Amnesty’s Middle East research director , Lynn Maalouf, has said “a year of shame is passed in Saudi Arabia while its Western allies namely the United States, the United Kingdom and France have turned a blind eye on the KSA’s human rights violations and prioritized business deals and arms sales to the ordeal of thousands of people languishing in Saudi prisons.”
Source: Amnesty International
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