Category News

Rights: Home and Abroad

Summer is here, and thousands of Saudis are getting ready to depart the country to spend their vacations away from the insane heat. Swine flu has certainly affected tourism around the world, but some people insist that they won’t let infectious diseases and global pandemics ruin their holidays. “I’d rather die of Swine flu somewhere nice than die of this hot weather in Riyadh,” a friend of mine half-jokingly said a couple of weeks ago.

With the large numbers of Saudi nationals traveling, the Ministry of Foreign affairs issued information guidelines of the varying nature of legal procedures abroad and how best to protect their rights when traveling or studying outside the Kingdom. The guidelines advise Saudis involved in legal cases to only speak in the presence of a lawyer and ensure attendance at court hearings to avoid in absentia rulings.

Sound advice, no doubt, and it is a commendable effort by the foreign ministry. But this piece of advice should also apply equally to citizens inside the country, and it is important that people here know their rights before the law. Unfortunately, little has been done to promote these rights among citizens. I believe that the government is responsible for protecting their citizens abroad and home alike.

Worth mentioning here is the Know Your Rights series published by the National Society of Human Rights. I personally don’t leave the house without a copy of this Rights of the Suspect (PDF) booklet. An English version of the booklet is available here (RTF).

Ensure Accessibility

I spent most of my last day in Jeddah hanging out with my friend Ibrahim in the old part of the city, aka al-balad. We finished our tour by taking pictures of one of Jeddah’s gates. Later that night we went to Lenuo’s for dinner. While enjoying our pizza, we noticed a group of guys at the restaurant door helping their friend who was on a wheelchair to enter the place.

Though it only took a moment, the brief incident got me and Ibrahim to talk about accessibility for people with special needs and the lack of laws that ensure they can easily get properly served in government buildings as well as those of private businesses. Officials here seem to always talk about how they care about disabled people, but such talk is rarely accompanied by actions. The US has something called the Americans with Disabilities Act, and I have always thought that we need something like that.

So, it was with much delight that I read this piece of news from Arab News on plans to make buildings in the country more disabled-friendly. I really hope that these plans will be put into action very soon.

Quick Note

Jeddah was great, as always, and I had a good time. We were worried that the event won’t attract enough attention, but in the end we had a full house and a large number of people watched the live stream and followed the event on Twitter. As I said earlier, we are happy with how it turned out, but of course there was some problems and mistakes that should be solved and avoided in the future.

Saudi BlogCamp was only the first step, and now we are looking forward to the next Saudi BarCamp event. No concrete plans have been set up yet for what this future event would be about, but most probably it won’t be on blogging. Topics such as information security and charity work have been suggested, but we are open to all ideas.

If there is a topic that you feel strongly about and you think would make a good event, don’t hesitate to contact the guys. They will help you to organize the event by all possible means wherever you are in the Kingdom. Big thanks to everyone for making Saudi BlogCamp a success, and see you all soon.

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Saudi BlogCamp

I will fly to Jeddah tomorrow to give a talk at the first Saudi BlogCamp. The presenters also include friends and fellow bloggers Khaled al-Nasser, Fouad al-Fahran and Essam al-Zamel. Saudi BlogCamp is the first of a series of events for bloggers to share knowledge and exchange experiences on different topics of interest. All bloggers, male and female, are invited to participate in these events and help organizing them. Saudi BlogCamp is part of Saudi BarCamp.

The first Saudi BlogCamp will be held at Andalusiya Cafe in Jeddah this Thursday, July 2, 2009. The registration fee is SR50, including lunch, and everyone is welcome. If you would like to attend you can find more information here and here. I’m certainly looking forward to this, and also looking forward to see you all there. If you can’t make it, you can still follow the event on this page which will offer a live stream from the room, and also through Twitter.

Excuse You?

The cartoon in my previous post from al-Riyadh daily has apparently caused some controversy and attracted many angry comments from their readers who thought the cartoonist has crossed a red line. Today the newspaper published an apology, and said the cartoon did not attempt to mock the religious police. “We would like to stress that the point of the cartoon are those who invade people’s privacy and question their behavior without a justification in a conservative society,” the paper added.

Invade people’s privacy and question their behavior without a justification in a conservative society? I’m sorry, but isn’t that what the religious police exactly do? Hmmm…

Scurrilous

The sorry state of traditional media in the country has encouraged some Saudis in recent years to start news websites aka electronic newspapers. Some of the most well-known names in that field today include Sabq, Alweeam, and A’ajel. I have no idea what is the size of competition between such websites and traditional media, but considering that the likes of Turki al-Sudairi don’t miss a chance to attack the news websites you can probably guess they are not exactly thrilled about their existence.

Traditional media people try to attack the news websites by suggesting that they they lack professionalism and credibility, but I believe the same thing can be said about the traditional media in Saudi Arabia. So let’s not even get into this.

There are two advantages online news sites here enjoy over traditional media: speed and scandals. They can report news as they happen and don’t have to wait until the next day. They can report on scandals that traditional media would usually avoid for reasons related mostly to their red lines and sometimes to their standards. Scandals sell, and in a conservative country like ours they carry more weight due to the conformist nature of society.

You could be someone who enjoys reading scandals and celebrity gossip. Or you could be someone who hates the whole thing. But in this case that does not matter much because I think that these online websites should do their best to use these advantages to deliver a better service to interested readers.

Earlier this week Alweeam website reported on what they called a “missionary party” sponsored by several Saudi and foreign companies to celebrate St George’s Day. Alweeam said the British Ambassador and his wife attended the party, as well as “many women and businessmen, and they partied wildly until the morning.” The site added that the party violates the country’s laws, which calls for punishing the Saudi companies that sponsored the event.

It is obvious from tabloid-like reporting and pictures published with the story what Alweeam are trying to do. They are screaming: A missionary party in the heart of Saudi Arabia! How scandalous!

Now this story could be actually scandalous, except for one thing: Alweeam have added one little, but significant, false detail which is the word “missionary.” The Robin Hood-themed party has nothing to do with missionary work, and the St.George Society Riyadh (SGSR) describes itself as a “charitable and social organization, set up in September 2006 with the aim of promoting England and Englishness.”

You could argue that St George’s Day has a religious origin, but it is also England’s national day, and like Christmas and other holidays is no longer seen in that context. More importantly, there is nothing on SGRS website that suggests that the organization and its activities are missionary or related to religion. Unfortunately, the website is no longer accessible. It seems to me that after publishing the news about their party they decided to take the website down in order to avoid more controversy. You can still view a version of the website using Google’s cache.

Please note that I have no comment on the event itself. I’m only commenting here on the coverage of Alweeam which ignored obvious facts, included false information, and did not bother to talk to pretty much anyone from the people involved. They had a chance to make a real scoop here, but they miserably failed. The only aspect that will be worth watching from this rather ridiculous story is how those Saudi companies that sponsored the party will deal with their PR nightmare.

Bad, Bad Al-Watan (Updated)

UPDATE II 21/6/09: Jamal Khashoggi was not fired. He wrote an editorial today about the incident, saying “maybe what the Prince wanted to tell us is that there are many good things that you can do to serve this nation, and that is what we are going to do.”

UPDATE 21/6/09:There are conflicting reports regarding Khashoggi. Some sources confirm that he was fired, and some other sources deny it. I’m told he is unreachable because he is outside the country on vacation.

UPDATE 20/6/90: It has been confirmed that Jamal Khashoggi, the editor-in-chief of al-Watan, has been fired after the incident. This is the second time Khashoggi is fired of this job; the first one was in 2003.

For a long time I made no secret of my frustration with the policy of closing shops for prayer time, and also the fact that some government employees use prayer as an excuse to neglect their jobs. Actually, I posted about this more than four years ago. As the margin for freedom of expression is slowly increasing, the local press is finally getting the courage to discuss this matter, with a few articles appearing here and there. Here’s one of these articles that was published in al-Watan last week. Since the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is the body responsible for enforcing this policy, I don’t think this will change anytime soon.

But speaking of the Commission and al-Watan, something interesting happened a few days ago. The Commission held an event in Riyadh last Tuesday to celebrate launching a strategic plan for the Hay’a. The ceremony was under the patronage of Prince Naif, the Second Deputy Premier and Minister of Interior, and after the ceremony there was a press conference where reporters had a chance to ask him about all kinds of issues.

The last questions in the press conference was by Mohammed Nasser al-Asmari, who writes a column for al-Watan. He asked the minister to explain why Riyadh has more Commission centers than police centers. Prince Naif said this is untrue, “and may God increase [the Commission centers],” he added, and then he went on to criticize the newspaper saying they have bad intentions, and that they attract writers against the faith and against the nation.

Al-Watan, which is considered one of the more liberal Arabic-langauge newspapers in the country, has strangely omitted the criticism from their coverage of the event that was leading their front page on Wednesday. Some observers have expressed their fear that the relative freedom al-Watan enjoyed since its inception might be coming to an end.

Adwan al-Ahmari, the reporter whose name appears in the byline of the story, told me the newspaper did not include that question in their coverage because al-Asmari is an opinion writer who does not represent the newspaper and that he was speaking for himself only. While I understand the choice the editors made here, I’m not sure if this was the best choice. Ignoring that comment raises questions about their transparency and credibility at a time when they really needed to emphasize such values.

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