Saudi Arabia is Getting Away with Murder – Again

A note from the Editor: Welcome to The Week in Rights newsletter. Each Friday, we highlight some of the week's reporting from Human Rights Watch, from deep-dive research to breaking news and even good news.

Find an excerpt from this week's edition below, and thanks for reading. - Paul

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, recently confirmed that a retired teacher, Muhammed al Ghamdi, was sentenced to death for his social media posts. Though al Ghamdi’s sentence had been earlier reported, the state’s confirmation remains chilling.

It’s also just the latest example of Saudi Arabia’s rock bottom human rights record.

“Shamefully, it's true,” MBS said of al Ghamdi’s sentence, blaming it on “bad laws.” He also said that the Kingdom is actively seeking to change these laws, assumingly, for the better.

Saudi Arabia’s repressive laws have long been used to throw critics and opponents in jail or execute them. But this statement by MBS is preposterous: Despite his professed self-awareness, under his rule, bad laws have only gotten worse.

In fact, the counterterrorism law which led to al Ghamdi’s death sentence was reissued in 2017 – after MBS rose to power.

Last year, Saudi courts handed?down a shocking 34-year sentence to Salma al-Shehab, a doctoral student at a British university, for mild criticism of the Saudi government on her Twitter account.

Saudi authorities love to promise change while the government openly uses brutality to rule. Despite promises to curtail use of the death penalty, authorities executed 81 men on a single day in March 2022 – the country’s largest mass execution in years.

But the government’s ruthlessness isn’t reserved only for peaceful critics and activists.

In August, Human Rights Watch reported in gruesome detail how Saudi forces are killing hundreds of migrants, including women and children, on the country’s remote border with Yemen. Researchers documented widespread attacks by Saudi border guards using explosive weapons against Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers attempting to cross into Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, the grueling war between the Saudi and UAE-led coalition and Yemen’s Houthis movement drags on, with Saudi forces responsible for numerous apparent war crimes.

Given all this, you would think Saudi Arabia must be a pariah state on the world stage. Not quite.

In fact, the US and other Western allies have all but rubber-stamped Saudi repression at home and abroad. The US is currently considering a major security agreement with the Saudi government.

In fact, Washington and other governments have provided support to Saudi Arabia without asking for any accountability for its horrific abuses.

As MBS continues to consolidate wealth and status behind enterprises like Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which now owns LIV Golf and is linked to multiple abuses – including the 2018 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, its time Saudi’s powerful allies start asking the hard questions.

First and foremost, at what point is enough enough and MBS made to answer for Saudi-sponsored horror?

Read the rest of this week's newsletter and sign up to have it delivered to your Inbox each week here.