The whys and wherefores of political persecution in Saudi Arabia

Is King Abdullah the most progressive, liberal Saudi monarch to date? Quite possibly, though it’s a limited field and a low bar.

Still, thanks to him, seventy thousand Saudi students now study in Western Europe, North America and Australia free of charge. New laws on domestic violence and divorce have been announced. One in five Shura Council members are female and the Saudi Gazette has its first female editor-in-chief. Women are finally allowed to use their own identity documents in court and, from 2015, will be able to vote in local elections.

In fact, King Abdullah is broadly liked by most Saudis; he is seen as being “on the side of the people”. However, where Abdullah’s regime has not lost its cruel edge is in politics.

Waleed Abulkhair, a Saudi Arabian human rights lawyer, has just been sentenced to fifteen years for “insulting general order” and “inflaming public opinion”. Two months earlier, Abulkhair’s brother-in-law, Raif Badawi, got ten years and a thousand lashes; his crime was setting up a website called “Saudi Arabian Liberals”. In March 2013, Mohammad Al-Qahtani and Abdullah Al-Hamid, both leading reformists and human rights activists, were given sentences of ten and eleven years respectively. On an institutional level, the Muslim Brotherhood, a political movement of some concern to King Abdullah and his family, has been smeared as a “terrorist organisation” and banned.

So while Abdullah has shown signs of care and compassion for some of his subjects, the House of Saud suffers no political opposition for long. In fact, Saudi Arabia has roughly ten times as many political prisoners as Iran; they are kept in far worse conditions; and, reportedly, they are tortured far more frequently.

While suppression goes on, using long jail sentences, lashing, politically-charged court cases and security service beatings, Abdullah is also using other means to keep the family in power.

The “carrot” approach comes in the form of generous welfare packages for Saudi citizens, which Riyadh can afford thanks to eye-watering oil wealth. The monarch has also been keen on keeping a handle on unemployment, a particular concern given the Kingdom’s growing youth population, by deporting large batches of migrant workers.

To keep the horror stories of Waleed Abulkhair and friends under wraps, the House of Saud also exercises tight control over the Kingdom’s newspaper and TV editors. It’s a successful policy: Saudi Arabia was ranked 164 out of 180 countries this year in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, while the Committee to Protect Journalists included Saudi Arabia on its list of the 10 most censored countries in the world. As a result, in theory, not much gets out about the political oppression that Abdullah has perpetuated.

To some extent, this lack of press freedom has been cancelled out by the Saudi addiction to social media and an unspoken government rule that dissent on a Twitter or Facebook account is OK so long as it doesn’t cause unrest on the streets. That’s all changing though: new “terrorism” legislation has been brought in designed to cull dissent from social media networks. Arrests are being made more frequently for those who protest on YouTube or tweet comments deemed to be too ferocious. The House of Saud is clamping down.

King Abdullah can keep most Saudi citizens happy, for the time being. His own political crimes continue to be either ignored or not noticed by the population at large.

However, although the Kingdom enjoys stability, the powers of the market forces which Saudi is built on – the international energy trade and globalisation – are gradually pushing the cost of living up. Future kings may be unable to maintain the pay-offs to those dissatisfied with monarchical rule, and figures like Waleed Abulkhair could soon become the Che Guevaras of the Saudi Peninsula.

There are also wildcards for the king to consider; in 2012, for example, a Twitter account which appeared to be operated by someone within the House of Saud began broadcasting accounts of shady corruption deals. Given recent events in Kuwait, the royal family will be more aware than ever that too much nepotism and corruption could lead to its demise. Furthermore, the unexpected Arab Spring, which Abdullah “dodged” (again by upping welfare payments), could visit Saudi shores unexpectedly.

If the regime falls (and we’re talking ten years or more), this may all be too little too late for the eight thousand or so political prisoners currently incarcerated by King Abdullah’s security forces. Today, they are suffering severely, enduring torture, overcrowding and long and unfair sentences for attempting to reform, offering political enfranchisement to ordinary Saudis, or simply reporting on human rights abuses.

The House of Saud may be running out of places to turn, though, and upon the release of Waleed Abulkhair in 2029, or his fellow reformists in 2025, the Kingdom that locked them up could well be in a very different place.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.