Date: Thursday, January 21, 2010.  

We Call for Establishing a Fact-Finding Committee

To Investigate Human Right Violations by the Saudi Interior Ministry

For the Following Three Reasons: 

First, they are systematic and amount to crimes against humanity.

Second, they rely on distorted religious texts that legitimize injustice, despotism, torture, backwardness, inequality, and repressing plurality.

Third, these abusive practices are one of the leading causes of the domestic and international terrorism, especially the tragic events of September 11th, 2001. 

To: The Custodian of the Two Holly Mosques, King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud. 

            At the outset, we take this opportunity to express our deepest appreciation to you for your reform initiatives, and owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude for the efforts in advancing and developing our country.

            We, furthermore, value your call for national dialogue and public participations and it’s a direction that indicates awareness of the concept of a just state, which doesn’t mean the government knows better than the people in running their affairs.

            We, too, appreciate the good reception you gave to the “vision” of the intellectuals for the present and the future of our country, delivered to you on Wednesday, January 15th, 2003. The vision was an endeavor to rejuvenate the country’s political system by establishing a constitutional monarchy, based on the allegiance condition as explained by the Islamic jurisprudence. Moreover, we appreciate your transparency, truthfulness, and your efforts in supporting independent judiciary; and your genuine feeling of the country’s urgent need for more responsible freedoms of expression, opinion, and assembly.

            For all these good qualities, today the people look up to you to demonstrate the real leadership that manifests transparency, bravery, foresight, serving the nation, favoring bigger over smaller calculations, and associations of deeds and rhetoric. Your warm reception of the intellectuals’ “vision” is a clear testimony of the right direction you have taken.

Custodian of the Two Holly Mosques,

            When an event takes place the people realize it, but only those who have perfect foresight would realize what will happen in the future by the eyes of analysis and figures, and not by night dreams, day dreams, and delusions. This realization of future events will only be attainable by consulting wise people who are brave and have wide-opened eyes; hence, shortsighted individuals can’t come up with right advice even if brave and cowards can’t come up with right opinions because fear abstracts their visions.

            We have broken the fear barrier, but we acknowledge that it’s not enough if we could not build a positive relation that grants your tolerance and attention; you have made us accustomed to breaking official protocols and your ability to listen to your brethren’s heartbeats even if their expressions comes in sensational sentences.

            We believe that the Saudi throne-under a constitutional monarchy- is the only guarantee to our country’s unity, security, and stability; that is why we call for rallying around it neither for the sake of our personal interest, sticking to the past, subduing to injustice, nor for fear of retributions by the Interior Ministry. But because we have not lost hope in the abilities of rising stars among royals who could support justice in a constitutional boundaries that encourages democracy and could accommodate the current era with modern ideas.

            However, the Saudi throne-in the absence of a constitutional monarchy-is not immune from hazardous currents and dangerous storms, because letting events happen haphazardly will have serious repercussions with the regime’s inability to avoid their challenging ramifications. In the midst of this treacherous atmosphere, the regime may lose its grip on the steering wheel especially when the leadership is always late in bringing crucial initiatives in the face of challenges.

            Certainly, the ills of the political system are tantamount to these of the human body. Whenever the cure is late, the general health deteriorates, problems increase, and new unaccounted for repercussions appear. The best farmers can anticipate wind directions before the blow, and then can install wind blockades.

            For all that, we want you to understand the pressing needs for reforms, and why citizens from all walks of life seize every opportunity to keep reminding about the importance of constitutional reforms since 1992.

            Today, we hope you can understand why Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA) calls for an investigation of human right violations, because they are one of the leading causes of domestic and international terrors, especially tragic events of 11th of September, 2001. Furthermore, these violations are brutal, systematic, ubiquitous, and amount to crimes against humanity.

•1.     Custodian of the Two Holly Mosques, Why We Address You Publically:

Because, we-from experience-developed an impression that private and secret letters do not reach you; especially, we are little nervous about our country’s future. We are among those who fear heavy precipitations and strong winds, and we find it an obligation to fix our home today before it’s destroyed or even blown away in a deep valley.

You’re the king who in charge of all affairs, who accepted shouldering all responsibilities in a critical time with grand challenges, international and domestic complications, so what are you going to do? God has granted you this opportunity, and if you waste it then he will question you about unutilized chances. You will be responsible before God, the people, your family, our country, and history for fears, human right abuses, and degradations.

Among fellow royals, you have a reformist’s reputation who led the team of reform in the royal family who called for a written constitution forty years ago. The citizens trusted your patriotism; hence, you’re sui generis among the royals. From your public parlances, the people know you are neither a hypocrite nor a double talker. This quality of transparency is one of the most characteristics that people trust on a ruler.

You’re ambitious and independent on your thoughts, and those who hold these two qualities aspire to assume new roles independent of any father’s or brother’s traditions; hence, they are always flagships for modernity in every place. They’re capable of succeeding because success is measured by ability to take suitable decisions before it’s too late.

Therefore, you hold the solution key and you’re closest in understanding reasons for this demand, its timing, and its publicity despite its costly price.  Human right and democracy activists don’t find a listening ear other than you, those whom we talk about refused to listen to anyone and consider themselves guardians over the people. They think that a sword, a prison, force, and torture are the solutions vis-à-vis those who demand the people’s rights and against those who resent abusing their dignities.

This petition is general.  But through you, we address all influential princes and we wish our words would reach the whole royal family, and we say: remember the inheritance built by your grandfathers, don’t lose it, then you will go astray and the country will be destroyed. Through you, we address Al-Saud family to rise to the level of events before it’s too late: the country’s dignity is your own responsibility and that of your brothers’.

The ability to found the pillars of reform will prove the royal family’s ability in responding to political and social changes. Otherwise, letting things happen haphazardly without adjudication claims will mean that the ruling family has lost the spirit of change. In this atmosphere, the signs of risks increase, domestic and international events are blowing more winds and bringing heavy precipitations on the country.

We here call all reform-minded princes to cooperate together to undertake the reform project. They must spend more efforts to convince their fellow conservative and doubtful brothers, because reform is in dire needs to initiatives and the ability to move and maneuver. The sheer opinion is not enough unless it’s manifested in tangible acts, those who want to rescue the ship must be brave and possess foresights.

• 2. Civil and Political Rights Demands:

Saudi activists have previously illustrated causes of successive crises since the Gulf War; they have explained the true impetuses of violence, terror, and events of 11th of September. Hence, they call for political reform as a lifeboat from all past, present, and future perils; in several petitions and numerous articles, they have demand the people’s rights:

• 1) Vision for the present and future, January 11th, 2003.
• 2) Constitutional reform first, December 16th, 2003.
• 3) Together on the path of reform, February 21st, 2004.
• 4) Strengthening the independence of judiciary, September 18th, 2004.
• 5) Towards an Islamic constitution, January 12th, 2005.
• 6) For an effective system of NGOs, May 20th, 2005.
• 7) Milestones in the Road to a Just and Democratic State, April 1st, 2007.
• 8) We demand opening the file of human right violations by Interior Ministry, April 18th, 2007.
• 9) Human right violation in Saudi prisons, 2008.
• 10) A call to holding a public court trials because secret tribunals are attempts to obscure causes of political congestions in order to ignore political solutions, April 10th, 2009.

All these petitions called for political reform, explained the causes of violence, demanded guarantees of civil and political rights, and asked for improving prison conditions. However, the Interior Ministry insisted on ignoring the causes of violence and extremism, continued to deny that political corruption is the root cause. The ministry doesn’t want to formulate NGOs’ law according to international standards, establish an elected parliament, have an independent judiciary, and establish public accountability offices. It, furthermore, refused plurality, equality, and freedom of expression and assembly. Above all, the Interior Ministry thinks that the treatment of violence and extremism will be more repression, torture, and violence.

On top of that, the Interior Ministry insists on compounding the falsification of the facts by using terrorism as a pretext to strike all types of peaceful expression that demand civil and political rights. As if people don’t know that the Ministry’s policy on the whole, following the second Gulf war since 1991, in particular, which have produced violence, fueled extremism, and legitimized despotism and backwardness. Violence has become a phenomenon only its components are ignored by the Interior Ministry, whose policies are the mother, foster, and nursing of terrorism altogether.

This indicates that moving forward in the systematic violation of the rights of the people, the insistence on the stepping on their dignity, and the insistence on the production of religious discourse to defend tyranny, oppression, and underdevelopment. These ill-treatments are not methods of transit, but they’re products of systematic government’s legislations.

Custodian of the Two Holly Mosques, you have promised to strike the head of injustice with sword of justice, and we don’t think you said this unless you are aware of the many injustices and determined to redress injustices.

Therefore, we call for the formation of a credible fact-finding committee to investigate serious human right violations over the past 30 years. 

•3.     Why call for the formation of a fact-finding committee

We demand the formation of a fact-finding committee, for the following reasons:

• 1. Human rights violations, have passed the stage of transit atrocities, and reached the level of legislation that regulates injustice and large-scale torture; which amounts to “crimes against humanity” according to the definition of the concept of crime against humanity.
• 2. Human right violations is one of the most important underlying causes of violence, globally and locally, especially the events of 11th of September, 2001.
• 3. It’s an explicit breach of a pledge of allegiance to hold legitimacy.
• 4. The Interior Ministry not only violates Islamic political structure like suppressing pluralism, freedom, and tolerance, but it justifies these flagrant abuses by a religious discourse that legitimizes ill-treatments by scholars of ignorance.
• 5. Despite all of these tragedies and disasters, the Interior Ministry has not learned the causes of violence, its policy hasn’t changed, and there is no serious evidence that it will implement a new policy. Hence, there is no new solution that saves the country from injustice and tyranny, which is the root cause of violence.
• 6. The Interior Ministry suggested through the media that the cause of violence is religious, and have recruited a lot of religious scholars to convince those involved in violence. This discussion suggested that Islam is the source of violence.
• 7. It has made the suppression of peaceful civil movements, and civil society activists, a systematic habit. The Interior Ministry insisted on tarnishing the reputations of activists, who refuse oppressions and injustice, because they called for political reform.
• 8. The clear roles of those who impede reform in the production and nutrition of violence, because the violent campaign did not begin only when means of peaceful expression were stifled. As argued by the late American president, John F. Kennedy: “those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent change inevitable.”
• 9. To make it clear to the old guards in the Interior Ministry and to those who follow their way from princes of darkness and scholars of oppression, that they are dreaming when they think that it can cover up these human right violations. Furthermore, they are dreaming if they think they could silent activists by ways of intimidation and fear. They are very wrong if they think the people will give up their dignity and abandoned their rights.
• 10. The people expected political reforms-at the beginning of your reign- including initiatives put forward by moderate reform princes. But they have seen the progress of the current of injustice, repression, and oppression; those who responsible for the production of the successive crises.

Therefore, Custodian of the Two Holly Mosques, when you establish a fact-finding committee is the actual evidence that you do not accept these flagrant human right violations; and you don’t want the investigation of these abuses to go beyond the local context. Because claims by fellow activists of human right abuses vis-à-vis the Interior Ministry were neglected which mean they have not reached you. Our belief is due to the fact that we do not expect you to tolerate injustice. If you cover up injustice, you would not have said again and again: “I would cut the head of injustice by the sword of justice.” That statement means you would be a refuge for reformists and human right advocates. The logic of necessity which justified for the government to invite international forces, would justify for the reformers to complain to the United Nations Human Right Council, who is Saudi Arabia is one of its member. We are forced to that before the current of oppression and repression takes a preemptive strike by fabricating accusations and criminalizing activists.

Respectfully,

The Saudi Civil and Political Rights Activists

ACPRA

P.S. Attached is a memorandum that explains why we accused the Interior Ministry of committing crimes against humanity, why we claim these violations are important  insidious causes of world terror, and why we call for establishing a fact-finding committee.         

A Summary of

The Memorandum:

Why A Fact-Finding Committee? 

• 1. A reservoir of resentments is accumulating by the ongoing government’s abuses of the people’s civil and political rights over the past thirty years:
•  
• The government’s inability to ingrain a patriotism concept by marginalizing other provinces and compromising plurality. Some royal family members view the people as cattle which can only be driven by a stick.
• Some members of the royal family lost credibility, especially those who take part in the management of the country as if it were a family business. Whenever the people’s awareness increases, oppressive princes intensified their brutality against them.
• Royal family members are divided in two camps: those who support reform and those who want to continue holding authority and wealth.
• Where are the constitutional-reform princes from these accumulating problems?
• Suppressing any form of civil society.
• Abusing the concept of the people’s guardianship over the government by the duality of princes and clerics.
• The Judiciary becomes a tool to legitimize human right abuses, especially the accused and prisoners.
• The government’s systematic and flagrant violations of the grand allegiance condition: the decisions must be taken by the people’s elected representatives. Hence, the government has lost its legitimacy.
• Publicizing distorted religious texts that violate concepts of nationalism, plurality, and tolerance; and support racism, isolationism, extremism, and backwardness.
• Princes of oppression and tortures failed to comprehend the Gulf War ramifications: foreign interventions are reminiscent to germs that invade only sick bodies.
• The government has not implemented political reforms which otherwise would be evident for the people’s political rights: hence, it rejected the idea of a written constitution today as it had rejected it forty years ago.
• A police state is a natural producer for violence: the Interior Ministry’s oppressive policy is the leading cause to domestic terror.

• 2. The government’s brutal policy vis-à-vis peaceful resentments and civil society active movements after the Gulf War has resulted on more political congestions: This is the absolute grand reason for violence.

• Repressing political reform petitions.
• Accusing human right activists of treacheries and incrementing them: E.g., the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR).
• Disabling leaders of the civil society and their initiatives which are the safety pin that could prevent chaos.
• The Interior Ministry thinks that torturous prisons are the solution?
• Signs of political congestions: The report authored by Dr. Mohsin Al-Awaji about brutality of prison tortures is an example before the occurrence of September 11th events.

• 3. How the sole job of the security establishment becomes terrorizing those who demand their political rights:
• Destroying families.
• Assassinations: physical and psychological.
• Tricking activists into devised traps.
• Eavesdropping on phone calls and following people by unmarked cars.
• Tricking incarcerated young individuals into forced confessions of marginal accusations in order to blackmail them in the future.
• Threats to throw individuals in jail for minor violations.
• Assassinations, threats of assassination, and forced disappearances.
• Ensnaring activists by forcing their relatives as tools.
• Constant harassments of human right activists.

• 4. How the job of the judiciary becomes preying upon activists by covering up the abuses of the rights of the incarcerated.

• Notarizing fabricated accusations, forced confessions, and smearing claims.
• Courts’ certifications of signed statements by detainees violet Islamic allegiance conditions.
• Incrementing peaceful activities: courts convict human right activists of what the government has signed and ratified as human rights.
• Diverting prisons from its intended goals: curbing and discipline, to abusive jobs: tortures and harassments.
• Considering compensating falsely accused as a royal gift conditioned by degradations and submissions.
• Abusing the notion of royal sovereignty to protect human right abuses.
• A sharp increase in unlawful, arbitrary arrests.

• 5. The duality of religious and political repressions, the relation between pressures and eruptions: the impulsion of violence.
• Religious extremism and violence are results of political extremism and repression.
• The oppressed people have been divided in to three categories after the Gulf War.
• The spiel has turned on the sorcerer: the violent acts perpetrated by Islamic groups are political masquerading as religious.
• Interior Ministry thinks it could obliterate violence by the same methods: renewing the old wounds.

• 6. Are extremism and violence in school curricula or in political methods?
• By suppressing any form of civil assembly, the government announces that causes of violence are religious: then it could introduce its totalitarian regime as a solution, it could accuse activists as religious extremists.
• The Islamic faith has been used by Arab dictators to implement political policies: from Afghanistan military campaign in 1979 to Islamic teachings that could tolerate despotism, corruption, and injustice.

• 7. Saudi Arabia is the glaring example for relationship between repression and violence:
• Arab authoritarian regimes look like an octopus; they hold tight to power and control everything with their eight strong arms.
• Desert communities are natural producers for violence, tribal traditions with no culture of peaceful civil reforms.
• Violence is a natural allay to its conducive atmosphere, but not its producers.

• 8. Reformists are in the accusation circle:
• The congestion has increased; it’s about time for the volcano to erupt unless political reform proceeds.
• Reformists have the perfect foresights, hence, they called for a constitutional monarchy as it’s being practiced in many Arab countries: Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar.
• Violence is a desert produce, and planting values of civil society is the solution.
• Civil society before we have a new duality: violence and foreign hegemony.
• Supporting allegiance conditions: Decision-taking by the people’s elected representatives is the proven panacea for violence.
• The Interior Minister accuses reformists, who have foresights.
• The neo-oppressors threw people in prison because they have only anticipated violence.

• 9. Establishing a fact-finding committee in order to protect political rights against potential abuses under the pretext of fighting terror, maintaining security, and defending Islamic faith.