US green light for Saudi suppression of Shi’a Muslims

The spurious entity called Saudi Arabia which Britain created in 1932 for its agent from Najd, the desert brigand, Abdul-Aziz Aal-e Saud, now sits snugly in the lap of the Americans, funding terrorists all over the world, and now on the instructions of Washington has intensified its suppression of the Shi’a Muslim populated oil-rich eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula bordering the Persian Gulf, which the Wahhabis had occupied in 1913.

No we have a feature in this regard that appeared on the ABNA website titled “US green light for Saudi suppression of Shi’a Muslims”.

Shi’a Muslim communities in what is called Saudi Arabia are economically impoverished despite the fact that the Persian Gulf coast of Arabia which has been their home and hearth, well over a millennium before the Wahhabi Najdis seized their ancestral homeland.

When it comes to the cultural and social taking, the regime in Riyadh treats the Shi’a Muslims like second-class citizens. For example, the courts do not consider valid their testimony, or a Shi’a Muslim cannot marry a Sunni according to the state’s law. They also face restrictions on performing religious rituals. The Saudi regime denies them authorization to build new mosques or Hussainyas, nor does it allow them to broadcast azaan, the official prayer time call. They counter the same – or even tougher – limitations when it comes to politics as Shi’a Muslims cannot be promoted to top levels and at best remain an ordinary government employee.

In recent years, and particularly after the 2011 Islamic Awakening in Arab lands, the Shi’a Muslims of what is called Eastern Province have pushed for their long-withheld rights through peaceful protests and rallies against the occupying Wahhabi regime with outermost efforts to avoid violence, despite the fact they have no share in their own oil wealth, on which the Saudis have grown fat, and which they squander on pleasure-hunting, funding of terrorism, buying of obsolete weapons, and stacking it in US and West European banks. But the pro-democracy demands of the Shi’a Muslims has always fall on deaf ears and were responded by heavy-handed crackdown. The regime’s clampdown continues to date and looks as if calls for reform and equality cannot be silenced.

As the US President Donald Trump flew to the region for a visit of Riyadh as his first station in May, the Saudi regime launched a rejuvenated repression campaign in Qatif city in the east, which is a major centre of Shi’a Muslims. The army forces raided and destroyed the houses in al-Masoura, the home village of the vocal Shi’a Muslim religious leader Sheikh Nimr Baqer an-Nimr, whom the regime martyred in prisons in early January 2016.

Al-Masoura, a historical village located in al-Awamiyah town near Qatif, has turned into a symbol of the resistance to what Amnesty International described the regime’s "ruthless" crackdown. Saudi forces have been struggling to destroy the landmark village to strip the people of their uprising emblem.

Trump’s Riyadh visit gave the Saudi rulers assurances that the US and the international rights groups will get their mouths sealed while violent repression campaign goes on in the Eastern Province. Beside house demolition, the raids so far took lives of several Shi’a Muslim residents who expressed their protest against the US-Backed Aal-e Saud regime. Many others were also detained.

But the media are not aware of precise number of the deaths or arrests as Riyadh prevents journalists from travelling to the Shiites-inhabited regions or sending reports from there. Amid such news blackout, Shi’a Muslim activists resort to the social media as their main channels to the outside world.

Repressive measures of the Saudis only sharpened the resistance of the Shi’a Muslims to the security forces' violations, and clashes ensued between the two sides.

So far, the courts sentenced to death several youths who were arrested in peaceful protests since 2011 uprisings that marked a crucial Islamic awakening period. The death rulings were issued after Trump's visit and covered 14 young people from Qatif. Nine others were given long-term prison sentences.

Amnesty International issued a statement in April this year noting that since beginning of 2016 the number of Saudi executions hit at least 94 cases. The statement further said that within last two years, execution rates have set to grow dramatically, with no signs of abating.

In early 2016, Saudi Arabia announced executing 47 people, among them were the outspoken Sheikh Nimr Baqer an-Nimr. Last week, the interior ministry announced executing four convicts who were accused of what is called “disobeying the ruler, attacking the police, and participating in riots in Qatif.”

Now that this execution is carried out, there are risks that three juvenile convicts could be executed soon. Ali an-Nimr, Davoud al-Marhoun, and Abdullah az-Zaher are below the execution age but their rulings have been finalized by receiving approval of the King Salman.

This is not the end of the prisoners of this type. Rights groups warn that at least 50 other prisoners could be executed soon as the attorney general issued death sentences. The rights groups say that they are sentenced only because of participation in reform and right-seeking rallies which are totally civilian.

All in all, the new round of attacks by the regime’s forces on Eastern Province that follow Trump’s visit and silence of the international organizations come to address two main goals:

First, drawing reactions, particularly armed ones, from the Eastern Province's Shi’a Muslims. In case of any response, the regime will, as it did before, accuse them of holding contacts with foreign states, something that opens the regime’s hand for even stricter crackdown and unjustified executions. For the Saudi rulers, new campaign, beside eliminating the opposition, can help strengthen internal Sunni unity.

Second, the clampdown will appease the powerful Wahhabi circles that brand the Shiites as “miscreant people.” This will win for the ruling regime fresh legitimacy from the dominant religious class.

Intensified repression and execution in Saudi Arabia in the shadow of the US and other allies' disregard lays bare the fact that human rights are simply an instrument serving Washington and its allies' interests as they are solely used against selected opponents.

It should be recalled that before the bloodbath the Saudis unleashed on Hijaz and occupied the Land of of Revelation in 1925, almost half the population of holy Medina was made up of Shi’a Muslims, while sizeable communities of Shi’a Muslims had flourished for centuries in Mecca, Ta’f, and Jeddah.

AS/ME