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.

Related:

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…