ALQST’s Annual Report for 2023, published today, highlights the increasingly stark contrast between, on the one hand, the glittering vanity projects of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and, on the other, the trampling of human rights and repression of the Saudi people, growing numbers of whom have been fleeing the kingdom in search of freedom and safety.
2023 saw Saudi Arabia’s autocratic leadership intensify its efforts to promote a narrative of technologically innovative social and economic transformation, and to pursue control, through ambitious purchases, of globally popular sports like football and golf. Yet behind the dazzling projections of cyber-smart cities and entertainment, the harsh reality was that widescale violations of the rights of Saudi citizens and residents continued as before.
Activists and private individuals were arbitrarily arrested and slapped with jaw-droppingly severe jail sentences – and in one case the death penalty – for peaceful social media activity, in increasingly brazen and irrational attacks on free speech. Prisoners of conscience, including some due for release, continued to be forcibly disappeared and wilfully exposed to vicious abuse. Many more were cruelly and arbitrarily banned from travelling outside the country.
Despite promises to curb use of the death penalty, the Saudi state executed at least 172 individuals during 2023, including dozens on terrorism charges that in some cases included taking part in protests. Meanwhile, further death sentences were upheld for crimes committed by minors, placing several at imminent risk of execution and destroying the authorities’ claims to have discontinued use of the death penalty for juvenile offenders.
Women remained second-class citizens despite vaunted reforms, and women’s rights activists – and even private individuals simply expressing support for women’s rights – continued to be targeted for arrest and prosecution.
In light of the continuing severe repression and denial of human rights in Saudi Arabia, ALQST calls on the international community – politicians, businesses and leading figures in the worlds of sport and entertainment, as well as the general public – to take whatever principled action they can to champion human rights, and to resist the Saudi leadership’s efforts to whitewash their deplorable record.
Key findings from ALQST’s Annual Report for 2023 include:
- Over the course of 2023, the Saudi authorities carried out numerous acts of collective punishment, intimidation and reprisal in the form of harassment and arrests of family members of activists and dissidents, and transnational repression in the form of extradition, travel bans or deportation
- They continued to arbitrarily arrest people who peacefully exercised their right to freedom of expression and other fundamental rights.
- The Saudi courts again handed down decades-long prison sentences to peaceful online activists, and even lesser-known individuals, in an increasingly brazen and irrational manner. The kingdom’s first known death sentence for social media activity was issued in July 2023.
- ALQST documented further examples of the Saudi authorities’ dangerous and vindictive handling of certain prisoners whose lives they recklessly, if not deliberately, place at risk. 2023 saw further hunger strikes by prisoners of conscience courageously protesting their harsh conditions and ill-treatment and harassment in jail.
- Several prisoners of conscience were again released in 2023 after completion of their sentences, but only on strict conditions that routinely included arbitrary bans on travel, work and social media activity. The authorities continued to impose arbitrary travel bans on detainees’ family members in a form of collective punishment that contravenes both international conventions and the kingdom’s own legislation.
- The Saudi state executed at least 172 individuals during 2023, including dozens on terrorism charges that in some cases included taking part in protests. Meanwhile, further death sentences were upheld for crimes committed by minors, placing several at imminent risk of execution following grossly unfair trials and destroying the authorities’ claims to have discontinued use of the death penalty for juvenile offenders.
- During 2023, the Saudi authorities continued their vicious campaign of arrests and prosecutions against members of the Huwaitat tribe for protesting against forcible eviction from their homes to make way for the planned Neom megacity project. In February 2023, ALQST published The Dark Side of Neom: Expropriation, expulsion and prosecution of the region’s inhabitants, a detailed report on the serious human rights violations being committed in connection with Neom.
- The lives of women in Saudi Arabia continued to be governed by the Personal Status (or Family) Law, which, despite being touted as a major reform in 2022, in fact entrenched many pernicious features of the traditional male guardianship system. Meanwhile, women human rights defenders, women’s rights activists, and even private individuals simply expressing support for women’s rights continued to be targeted for arrest and prosecution.
- Despite some limited reforms in recent years, Saudi Arabia’s notorious kafala (sponsorship) system remained substantially intact in 2023, with migrant workers and domestic workers in particular continuing to suffer routine abuse. A new law for domestic workers, announced on 2 October 2023 and due to come into effect on 21 September 2024, will offer several protections, if implemented. Meanwhile, the authorities ramped up their crackdown on Ethiopian migrants, with mass killings at the Saudi-Yemen border.
The Annual Report concludes with a set of recommendations for both the international community and the Saudi authorities and a timeline of human-rights related events in Saudi Arabia in 2023.
