Category Politics

Press Freedom in KSA

RSF has released their 2007 Press Freedom Survey, and it is very clear that we are not doing well at all. Of course this is not surprising in any way, but one was hoping that things could get better. Here is what they have to say about Saudi Arabia:

The country remains one of world’s biggest enemies of press freedom. Two journalists were dismissed in 2006 for going beyond the limits set by the dominant ultra-conservative religious authorities.

The Saudi regime maintains very tight control of all news and self-censorship is pervasive. Enterprising journalists pay dearly for the slightest criticism of the authorities or the policies of “brother Arab” countries. The tame local media content means most Saudis get their news and information from foreign TV stations and the Internet. But the Qatar-based satellite station Al-Jazeera, which is banned in Saudi Arabia, was not allowed to cover the annual pilgrimage to Mecca for the fourth year running in 2006.

Journalist Fawaz Turki, of the government daily Arab News, was dismissed in April for writing about the atrocities perpetrated by Indonesia, a Muslim country, during its 1975-99 occupation of East Timor. He had previously been warned for criticising Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in print.

The regime directly censored some journalists. The culture and information ministry told journalist Kinan ben Abdallah al-Ghamidi without explanation on 30 November that he could no longer write in the government daily Al Watan. He had already been forced to resign as the paper’s editor in 2002 after reporting that US troops were using the country’s military bases.

The privately-owned daily Shams was closed for a month on 16 February and its editor, Battal Alkus, dismissed for reprinting some of the cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed first carried by a Danish paper in September 2005.

Unlike in China, where a blocked website is passed off as a technical problem, Saudi filters say openly that certain pages on a site have been censored by the authorities. Targets are mostly pornography, but also political opposition, Israeli publications and homosexuality.

Blogs are a problem for the censors, who tried in 2005 to completely bar access to the country’s main blog-tool, blogger.com. They gave up after a few days and now just censure blogs they object to, such as “Saudi Eve,” the diary of a young woman who discusses her love life and criticises government censorship, which was added to the blacklist in June 2006.

I’m glad that “blogs are a problem for the censors,” though, and I’m sure they will still be for a long time. (via MD)

The news of arresting ten men earlier this week, i…

The news of arresting ten men earlier this week, in what was described as a part of the efforts to crackdown on terrorism, was really disturbing. It is hard to see the link between these men, most of them are well-known academics and reform activists, and the allegations against them: funding “suspicious bodies” and “luring Saudi citizens.” As usual, the government is not releasing much information, but many speculate that the terrorism charges are a pretext and that they were arrested for their political beliefs.

Khaled al-Dakhil, assistant professor of sociology…

Khaled al-Dakhil, assistant professor of sociology at KSU, was a guest on the Washington Post Live Discussions on Monday to answer questions about his new research into the ascent of Wahhabism and the Saudi state in the early 20th Century. I asked him a question and he answered:

Hofuf, Saudi Arabia: Last year you were speaking during a cultural event in Riyadh and you were fiercely attacked by a religious man when you described the Shiite minority as a part of Saudi Arabia and that the rest of Saudis should understand and accept that. Do you think this attitude toward Shiites in the Kingdom will ever change? How do you see the future of Saudi Shiites?

Khalid al-Dakhil: There are indications that change is taking place here. I think it will change, although this will take time. The govt. should play the leading role to promote such a change. The Shiites in SA are citizens just like everyone there, and should be taken as such. But, at the same time, the Shiites themseleves should not behave as Shiites. They should behave and act as citizens, and insist on their rights first and foremost as Saudi citizens, and not as Shiites. This does not mean that they should abandon their beliefs. NO. But these beliefs should be enriching part of the the cultur and politics of the whole society. In other words, the Shiites should promoters of religious diversity in the country.

The C Word

In a recent post I noted that despite the large spending, healthcare remains one of the weakness points when it comes to governmental performance. I believe that the majority of citizens are not satisfied with the services they receive at Ministry of Health’s hospitals, and I think many of them are more than willing to tell you all kinds of stories from their experiences at such hospitals, from misdiagnoses to surgical errors and everything in between, the list can go endlessly.

Why do citizen have to put up with poor services in the same time when a very large part of the national budget is supposedly directed at healthcare? Whenever I compare the billions of riyals spent and the kind of services in the governmental hospitals I can only think of one word to describe what is going on here: “corruption.” Oops! Have I said that out loud? It is puzzling to me how “the C word” has become such a taboo that you can rarely find it in the local press. When the press try to point out to such thing in the government they would usually use the term “administrative reform,” a vague hollow expression that you probably never heard of before. Talk about “alkhossusiya al saudia”!

But when I talk about corruption at the government’s healthcare sector I’m not simply talking about comparing the poor services at hospitals to the large spending, but also about how things are run at MOH as I have come to learn some stories from few insiders, and they are not pleasant at all.

I have recently met with a gentleman who once worked at MOH, and he is one of the country’s top professionals in his field. The man was called to join a committee that was responsible to review offers by companies to provide tools, equipment, and services for all hospitals owned by the government. The estimated value for the contract in hand was about one billion riyals (~ US$ 266mn). The man told me he was shocked at how the competing companies were competing to give bribes, not to win the contract, I meant in order to win the contract. Actually, a representative of one of these companies had the nerve to visit the man’s office with an envelop chocked with hard cash! Needless to say the representative was kicked out right away, and after a brief time our gentleman was told that this was simply “business as usual” at MOH, and he had to live with that if he wanted to keep his new job. He could not, so he was shortly replaced. “At least I didn’t get my hands dirty,” he said.