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| Arabia | |
| Saudi youths stage anti-regime rally | |
| 2012-01-05 | |
[Iran Press TV] Saudi youths stage a rally in the kingdom's Eastern Province to condemn the regime's brutal crackdown on the protesters inside the country as well as its military invasion of neighboring Bahrain.
The Eastern Province has been a scene of numerous anti-regime demonstrations since the beginning of 2011, with the outraged public urging implementation of human rights reforms, realization of freedom of expression, and release of political prisoners. Saudi troops, together with forces from the United Arab Emirates, invaded Bahrain on March 14, 2011 to assist the Bahraini government in its quelling peaceful popular protests in the Persian Gulf island. On March 5, 2011, the Saudi Interior Ministry called all public gatherings 'illegal,' authorizing regime forces "to take all measures needed" against the people, who would defy the ban. According to Amnesty International, more than 300 people have been detained for taking part in peaceful demonstrations in the province since March. Saudi activists say there are more than 30,000 political prisoners, mostly prisoners of conscious, in jails across the kingdom. According to human rights campaigners, most of the detained political thinkers are being held without trial or legitimate charges and have been arrested on grounds of mere suspicion. The implementation of the suppressive measures, however, has failed to dishearten the protesters. | |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 This excerpt explains why the Saudi Royals backpedaled on Westernization: In 1979 Shia opposition to the royal family was encouraged by the example of Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini's revolutionary ideology from Iran and by the Sunni Islamist (sometimes seen as fundamentalist) groups' attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November. During the months that followed, conservative ulama and Ikhwan groups in the Eastern Province, as well as Shia, began to make their criticisms of government heard. Ultimately a country's rulers must go along with the fundamental beliefs of its populace. And the Saudi populace is steeped in Islamism, much as Americans are steeped in secularism. The Sunni Islamist Revolutions of 2011 in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia will eventually be remembered as Obama's greatest foreign policy failure, much as the Iranian Revolution is viewed, justly, as the capstone to Carter's unbroken string of defeats in the international arena. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2012-01-05 17:03 |
| #2 Background on the Eastern Province: Shia are a minority in Saudi Arabia, probably constituting about 5 percent of the total population, their number being estimated from a low of 200,000 to as many as 400,000. Shia are concentrated primarily in the Eastern Province, where they constituted perhaps 33 percent of the population, being concentrated in the oases of Qatif and Al Ahsa. ... In 1979 Shia opposition to the royal family was encouraged by the example of Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini's revolutionary ideology from Iran and by the Sunni Islamist (sometimes seen as fundamentalist) groups' attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November. During the months that followed, conservative ulama and Ikhwan groups in the Eastern Province, as well as Shia, began to make their criticisms of government heard. On November 28, 1979, as the Mecca incident continued, the Shia of Qatif and two other towns in the Eastern Province tried to observe Ashura publicly. When the national guard intervened, rioting ensued, resulting in a number of deaths. Two months later, another riot in Al Qatif by Shia was quelled by the national guard, but more deaths occurred. Among the criticisms expressed by Shia were the close ties of the Al Saud with and their dependency on the West, corruption, and deviance from the sharia. The criticisms were similar to those levied by Juhaiman al Utaiba in his pamphlets circulated the year before his seizure of the Grand Mosque. Some Shia were specifically concerned with the economic disparities between Sunnis and Shia, particularly since their population is concentrated in the Eastern Province, which is the source of the oil wealth controlled by the Sunni Al Saud of Najd. During the riots that occurred in the Eastern Province in 1979, demands were raised to halt oil supplies and to redistribute the oil wealth so that the Shia would receive a more equitable share. After order was restored, there was a massive influx of government assistance to the region. Included were many large projects to upgrade the region's infrastructure. In the late 1970s, the Al Jubayl project, slated to become one of the region's largest employers, was headed by a Shia. In 1992, however, there were reports of repression of Shia political activity in the kingdom. An Amnesty International report published in 1990 stated that more than 700 political prisoners had been detained without charge or trial since 1983, and that most of the prisoners were Shia. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2012-01-05 16:55 |
| #1 Drill or die. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2012-01-05 00:54 |