"A New Low", this year’s in-depth annual report of ALQST for Human Rights, documents and discusses key human rights developments in 2022.
Introduction
The Saudi authorities’ repression and contempt for human rights reached a new low in 2022. The familiar pattern of arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances continued and, from mid-year onwards in particular, the Saudi courts started imposing jail sentences of unprecedented severity for peaceful, legitimate activity on social media, further deepening the climate of fear in the kingdom. Use of the death penalty increased sharply after a lull during the COVID period, with the biggest mass execution in recent times (of 81 men in a single day), and executions for non-violent drugs-related offences made a dramatic comeback.
This intensification of the authorities’ repression went hand in hand with the progressive diplomatic rehabilitation of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman. He had been cold-shouldered by the international community since 2018 because of his directing role in the state-sponsored assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
This position had already begun to soften in 2021, as US President Joe Biden’s promise to “recalibrate” US-Saudi relations failed to materialise. But then in 2022 the energy crisis caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine led Western and other leaders to abandon any remaining scruples, and reach out to Riyadh for increased oil supplies. Visits to Saudi Arabia, including meetings with Bin Salman, by the UK’s then-Prime Minister, Boris Johnson in March and President Biden in July, followed by a meeting in Paris between the crown prince and French President Emmanuel Macron, sealed Mohammed bin Salman’s successful return, with impunity, to the international stage. This in turn, it seems, unleashed a new wave of intense repression in the Saudi kingdom, as ALQST and other activists and human rights organisations had previously warned.
In the light of these developments, and in the current challenging global situation, it is now more important than ever for the international community – politicians, business leaders, celebrities in the world of sport and entertainment and the general public – to take principled action wherever they can to champion human rights, and to resist the Saudi leadership’s efforts to whitewash their deplorable record.
