Saudi regime using executions as political weapon against Shi’a Muslims

The British-created spurious entity called Saudi Arabia continues its crimes against humanity with American support and besides its funding of terrorists in Syria and Iraq, and its bombardment of Yemen’s cities and towns, it is carrying out a genocide of Shi’a Muslims, especially in the eastern oil-rich part of the Arabian Peninsula where they form an overwhelming majority.

Now we have a report in this regard compiled by Maya Jamieson, along with the views of other analysts.

Human rights groups have condemned the recent executions by Saudi Arabia in the Eastern Province of four men convicted in a secret court on unproven charges of terrorism. The Saudi regime says the offences were committed in the Qatif region, but Amnesty International has charged the Riyadh with carrying out a "systematic crackdown" which has seen "virtually all independent human rights activists and other critics silenced, prosecuted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms or forced to flee the country".

A report this year by human rights organisation Reprieve found that 41 per cent of those executed in Saudi Arabia in 2017 were killed for non-violent acts such as attending political protests.

Human Rights Watch says it's concerned with the lack of due process, the possibility that individuals are tortured into giving confessions and prosecutors' inability to provide any other corroborating evidence.

The Wahhabi regime, like its ally in the region the illegal Zionist entity, is targeting minors as it ramps up executions of peaceful protesters, whose only crime is being Shi’a Muslim and defenders of their Saudi occupied homeland.

Four young males on death row who were arrested in their early-teens in the Eastern Province have been awaiting their fate for the past five years. Now, after a recent spate of executions, human rights groups fear the worst.

The overwhelming majority of the eastern oil-rich part of the Arabian Peninsula on the Persian Gulf has been Shi’a Muslim for the past several centuries. In 1913 it was invaded and occupied by the British agent, the desert brigand, Abdul-Aziz Aal-e Saud of Najd, who in 1925 seized Hijaz by launching a general massacre of Muslims in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the port city of Jeddah and the mountainous resort of Ta’ef. In 1932, the British rewarded his crimes against Islam and Muslim by creating for him the spurious entity called Saudi Arabia. With the emergence of US as superpower in the post-World War 2 era, the Wahhabi entity, now thriving on the stolen oil wealth of the Shi’a Muslims, became Washington’s client in the region, and has since unabatedly continued its crimes against humanity. 

Adam Coogle, Middle East researcher with Human Rights Watch, told SBS World News: "It's a very serious conflict that has got very scant international attention,” He was referring to the pitched battles over the past month-and-a-half between Saudi forces and armed local defenders who have entrenched themselves in the historic neighbourhood in the town of Awamiya in the Qatif region and have vowed to resist Riyadh’s stated intention to demolish the historical neighbourhood. According to Ali Aal-e Ahmed, a former political prisoner in Saudi Arabia who now heads the Institute for Persian Gulf Affairs in Washington DC, "if you compare it to the rest of Saudi Arabia, it has always been a place where politics have been made. Movements from communist to pan-Arabist, to Islamist, to liberal movements have been born there, and activists from there dominate the country's political opposition historically. So this is an area which has given the Saudis a big headache for many years."

It is obvious that the historic and cultural heritage of the Shi’a Muslims of eastern Arabia is under threat. Earlier this year, the UN urged Saudi Arabia to halt forced evictions and demolitions of the historic al-Masora neighbourhood in Awamiya.

Aal-e Ahmed said: "The Saudi regime, as part of its long term policy is to destroy local culture and to target societies. And what they have done is in order to humiliate the birthplace of the protest movement in the Eastern Province, they wanted to destroy its culture."

He links targetted executions to the Wahhabi clique’s bid to establish its legitimacy in the eastern oil rich region.

Aal-e Ahmed pointed out: "All of them are protestors. Most of them their only crime is to protest or to write slogans on the walls or to raise the word in Arabic 'Death to Aal-e Saud', or 'Down Down Aal-e Saud'.

According to him “This is a very, very sensitive and huge embarrasment to the Saudis... and that's why the popular religious leader, Sheikh Baqer an-Nimr, was executed because he dared to speak in public inside Saudi Arabia about the Saudi ruling family by name."

The 57-year-old Shi’a Muslim Leader, along with 47 other peaceful activists was martyred in January 2016 by the regime, prompting widespread international condemnation.

As defender of the rights of the people of the Eastern Region, he was a well-known figure at anti-regime demonstrations, often criticising Saudi rulers for their mistreatment of the Shi’a Muslim majority of the oil-rich region and the growing demands for freedom from Wahhabi occupation.

Ali Aal-e Ahmed says that for young people, Sheikh Baqer an-Nimr became an icon. However, there's a 'different direction' now. The young people have a different direction or projection than the previous generation in terms of what they are trying to achieve. Before there was the goal of obtaining basic human rights. I think now it's a much higher level in terms of attaining and capturing greater political rights. It's no longer an issue of human rights. It is an issue of politics and either regime change or replacement or severe reform.

Amnesty International and other world bodies have increased calls in condemnation of the genocide of the Shi’a Muslims by Saudi Arabia, and hopefully this will force the Wahhabi regime to reconsider its policies, or else face a simmering volcano, which, when it finally bursts, will wipe out the whole of Saudi Arabia from the map of the region, irrespective of the American and Zionist support to the regime.

AS/ME