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Tag: Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia’s Threats Against UN Put Millions Of Middle Eastern Children At Risk
A Saudi military member stands next to a damaged building in the area of the presidential palace in the southern city of Aden. September 27, 2015. (Flickr / Ahmed Farwan)
June 13, 2016
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Saudi Arabia’s Threats Against UN Put Millions Of Middle Eastern Children At Risk

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

The Saudi-led attack on Yemen has drawn international criticism for the extremely high civilian death toll, including many children, and the brutal war crimes that have caused widespread starvation and suffering.

So how did the Gulf kingdom and its allies get taken off a United Nations blacklist of countries which harm and kill children? Apparently, the Saudis threatened to cut funding to crucial programs, or even place the U.N. under an Islamic religious ban through a mass fatwa.

It’s a move that’s drawing renewed criticism of the Saudi role in the international peacekeeping authority, even from the highest offices in the U.N. itself.

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Domestic Workers Remain Enslaved In Saudi Arabia: ‘I Thought They Would Kill Me’
Siti, a domestic worker from Indonesia, faced abuse and mistreatment in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Hong Kong. March 1, 2014. (Flickr / ILO in Asia and the Pacific)
June 13, 2016
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Domestic Workers Remain Enslaved In Saudi Arabia: ‘I Thought They Would Kill Me’

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Despite reassurances by U.S. government officials that Saudi Arabia is taking steps to end slavery within its borders, human rights experts believe the problem is still widespread, especially among the Gulf kingdom’s domestic workers.

“I thought they would kill me. I had to escape. I wasn’t given enough to eat. They had my wages, my passport, my phone,” said Kasthuri Munirathinam, a domestic worker from India who escaped imprisonment in Saudi Arabia, in an interview with Thomas Reuters Foundation.

“She had been in Saudi Arabia for just two months, one of thousands of Indians heading to the Gulf states every year for work, but was terrified she would never see her family again,” Anuradha Nagaraj reported on May 3.

Last September, news of Munirathinam’s daring escape from a second floor apartment went viral. Her employer chopped off her hand during her efforts to free herself, an injury that would ultimately require the amputation of her arm.

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How A 100 Year-Old British Colonial Contract Continues To Shape The Middle East
The Mayor of Jerusalem Hussein Effendi el Husseini [al-Husseini] (Ottoman), meeting with Sergts. Sedgwick and Hurcomb of the 2/19th Battalion, London Regiment, under the white flag of surrender, Dec. 9th, 1917. (Wikimedia Commons)
May 17, 2016
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How A 100 Year-Old British Colonial Contract Continues To Shape The Middle East

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Tuesday marked the 100th anniversary of a decision by French and English diplomats to divide the Middle East into competing empires — a decision that continues to influence unrest in the region even today.

The historic Sykes-Picot agreement, named for its authors, diplomats Mark Sykes of Great Britain and François Georges-Picot of France, was secretly signed on May 16, 1916, although the world was not aware of its existence until after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Signed by the U.K. and France during a meeting at Downing Street in London, with the agreement of the Russian Empire, it was intended to divide the two imperialist nations’ sphere of influence after an anticipated victory against the Ottoman Empire in World War I.

Britain took control of land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, including modern-day Jordan, southern Iraq, and the Mediterranean ports of Haifa and Acre. France took parts of Turkey, northern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, while Russia took Istanbul, Armenia, and the Turkish Straits.

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Vision 2030: Saudi Arabia Takes Desperate Measures To Break Its ‘Oil Addiction’
Employees of Saudi Arabia's ARAMCO and Bechtel International drill for oil in Kuwait in 1950. (Flickr / David Foster)
May 2, 2016
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Vision 2030: Saudi Arabia Takes Desperate Measures To Break Its ‘Oil Addiction’

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

As oil prices grow more unstable, Saudi Arabia is facing a future of upheaval and economic collapse.

In October, the International Monetary Fund published a report in October, forecasting the collapse of the Saudi economy by 2020. Last week, Prince Mohammed Bin Salman unveiled the “Vision 2030” plan, a desperate attempt to break what he called the country’s “oil addiction,” according to Reuters.

“The Saudi government is reeling from the plunge in crude oil prices, which left it with a nearly $100 billion shortfall last year. Petroleum accounts for roughly 80 percent of the kingdom’s annual budget,” Maria Gallucci noted in an April 25 analysis of the plan for International Business Times.

The plan calls for the country to sell a stake in Aramco, its publicly-owned oil company, in an international public offering some are predicting could top $2 trillion.

It also outlines other significant changes to the economy, including reforms to employment and immigration law and redirecting the nation’s resources toward new sources of income such as the tourism and the defense industries.

Read moreVision 2030: Saudi Arabia Takes Desperate Measures To Break Its ‘Oil Addiction’
At UN Human Rights Council, Saudi Arabia Supports Right To Torture & Execute LGBT People
In this Aug. 10, 2010 photograph, Vancouver residents protest to bring attention to countries, like Saudi Arabia, which imprison or execute LGBT people. (Flickr / DragonWoman)
April 13, 2016
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At UN Human Rights Council, Saudi Arabia Supports Right To Torture & Execute LGBT People

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

At the most recent session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, Saudi Arabia objected to a resolution that condemns the use of torture by law enforcement and reaffirms the human rights of LGBT people.

The resolution, passed during the council’s 31st session, which closed on March 24, condemns the use of torture “and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” and urges nations to prevent torture by police or during pre-trial detention.

While the report is primarily focused on police and governmental use of torture, it briefly references the latest report by Juan Mendez, the special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, which was issued during the session.

According to a U.N. press release, Saudi Arabia protested because Mendez’s report “included 65 references to sexual orientation and was an attempt to use the eradication of torture to promote other issues, which lacked any ground in international law.”

Read moreAt UN Human Rights Council, Saudi Arabia Supports Right To Torture & Execute LGBT People
Saudi Arabia Takes Proxy War With Iran To Nigeria As Shias Are Brutalized
Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky speaks into a microphone in this 2013 photograph. (Wikimedia Commons / Tajo Malli)
January 15, 2016
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Saudi Arabia Takes Proxy War With Iran To Nigeria As Shias Are Brutalized

Posted in Archive, Journalism, and MintPress News

On Dec. 12, Nigerian government forces carried out a brutal massacre against the country’s minority Muslim Shia population, with some media reporting over 1,000 killed, after the military imprisoned and tortured the group’s important dissident leader Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky.

The news of the slaughter of a minority religious group emerges as Nigeria announced it is considering joining Saudi Arabia in the fight against Daesh (the Arabic acronym for the group commonly known in the West as ISIS), linking two nations known for repression and repeated, disturbing human rights violations. Saudi Arabia, in turn, has a history of promoting the extremist religious ideology of Wahhabism that inspires terrorist groups like Nigeria’s own Boko Haram, the terrorist group that the country is still struggling to control, and even al-Qaida and Daesh.

And Zakzaky isn’t the only activist to face imprisonment in recent months — Nigeria has a reputation for quashing political dissent no matter where it’s source. However, the arrest and crackdown came just months after Muhammadu Buhari, a retired army general, successfully won election on a promise to restore order to the country.

Read moreSaudi Arabia Takes Proxy War With Iran To Nigeria As Shias Are Brutalized