Expression
On 15th February 2024, Amnesty International issued an urgent action on Manahel Al-Otaibi who was arrested in November 2022 and has been forcibly disappeared since November 2023 in retaliation against her tweets supporting women’s rights. She was charged with violating the Anti-Cyber Crime Law due to her tweets in support of women’s rights as well as posting photos of herself at the mall without an abaya on Snapchat. Her case has been referred from the Criminal Court in Riyadh to the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC), set up to try terrorism-related crimes.
On 19th January 2024, Saudi paediatrician, blogger, and prominent Wikipedian Osama Khalid marked the occasion of his 30th birthday in prison. He was arrested in July 2020 and later sentenced to five years in prison, increased to 32 years on appeal. A dedicated Wikipedian, he volunteered countless hours to enrich the free encyclopedia in Arabic, championing values of transparency and open access to information. He became a beacon for free knowledge, a role that drew unwanted attention from the Saudi authorities. His prison sentence is in direct retaliation against these peaceful activities.
In January 2024, Human Rights Watch condemned the Saudi Government’s use of European football competitions to “sportswash” its reputation. The country recently hosted the men’s Spanish football Super Cup, despite warnings to LGBT and other visiting supporters from a participating team, and it is about to host the Italian equivalent. These are just two examples among the many sporting and nonsporting events that Saudi Arabia is hosting as part of its “Vision 2030”, a multi-billion programme backed by Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman aimed at diversifying the country’s economy and rehabilitating its image.
Also in January 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Working Group issued its report on Saudi Arabia. The report included 354 recommendations from 135 UN member states, many of them calling on the country to take substantive measures to ensure reforms, including in relation to guaranteeing the rights freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, abolishing the death penalty, protecting migrant workers’ rights and eliminating all forms of discrimination against women. Commenting on the report, Amnesty International said, “That so many UN member states took this opportunity to confront Saudi Arabia about its litany of human rights abuses and press the country’s authorities for reform shows that without genuine human rights reform, no amount of money spent on image laundering and sportswashing campaigns can conceal the rapidly escalating repression in the country.”
GCHR and CIVICUS made a joint submission in 2023 ahead of Saudi Arabia’s UPR. ALQST for Human Rights made three submissions with partners to the UN Human Rights Council, ahead of Saudi Arabia’s fourth cycle of the UPR, documenting the deteriorating human rights situation in the kingdom since the last UPR in 2018. GCHR, ALQST, MENA Rights Group, Reprieve, Amnesty and the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) worked together at the UN to carry out advocacy with member states ahead of the UPR.
ALQST, in collaboration with Global Citizen, has launched a new campaign to maximise public pressure on Saudi Arabia's leaders to accept and implement important human rights recommendations made during Saudi Arabia's recent UPR. ALQST calls on its supporters to take part in the campaign by signing a petition, joining in a Twitter/ X action, and circulating both of these widely, to help increase the spotlight on the Saudi authorities' response.