Interview with Massoud Shadjareh, head of the Islamic Human Rights Commission from London, about protesters in Saudi Arabia demanding the release of prominent Shia scholar, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
Interview with Massoud Shadjareh, head of the Islamic Human Rights Commission from London, about protesters in Saudi Arabia demanding the release of prominent Shia scholar, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
Q: Tell us about this situation, it seems that the situation in Saudi Arabia dealing with human rights continues to deteriorate and now of course we have a figure such as Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr who may be facing many years in prison.
What can be done if anything in order to try to put some pressure on Riyadh?
Shadjareh: Well, the reality is that the situation as you said in Saudi Arabia with regards to human rights and political activities of citizens is really becoming much more ridiculous and much oppressive.
The reality is that right now the reports show that there are 30,000 political prisoners in Saudi Arabia living in a very difficult condition. They are being put in prisons like sardines and some of the videos that we have actually exposes the barbarity of the way that these people are being treated.
They are political prisoners because they just want more empowerment and better situation out of this dictatorship and the reality is that the Saudis, the way they deal with these sort of thing, is every once in a while they try to present all the dissent against them as Shia from the Eastern Province and Sheikh al-Nimr was arrested for creating that perception.
But the reality is that all Saudis actually want to change and an overwhelming majority of political prisoners are from the Sunni background.
Q: In your perspective how much of a role does United States play in all of this that it appears that the US also the UK and other Western governments practically look the other way whenever Saudi Arabia does anything when we are talking about violating human rights we do not hear whole lot out of London and Washington?
Shadjareh: We do not hear a lot out of West all together.
You see absence of any sort of exposure of the barbaric human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia and this is as true in United States as it is with rest of Europeans and indeed beyond that when you look at United Nations and indeed Western human rights institutions like Amnesty Human Rights Watch are also absolutely silent.
And this shows the political support that this oppression of ordinary peoples in Saudi Arabia receives from the West. They really have got complete support for committing these barbaric acts and human rights abuses.
Q: So how much of a role though do you consider these Western entities whether we are talking about governments or as you just talked about certain so-called human rights organizations or even the United Nations, how big of responsibility do they have for what is taking place in Saudi Arabia?
It appears that if Riyadh had some pressure coming from somewhere that perhaps they would think twice at least before carrying out such barbaric crimes that they do against regular people and those who are imprisoned there?
Shadjareh: Absolutely. What I am telling you that there really is no positive response and exposure is not really just what I am saying. Recently in a TV program one of the princesses was a supporter of the regime actually articulated that United States and human rights organizations do nothing and give us complete freedom to have whatever we want to. So as long as this continues we are going to see very little change.
And only two weeks ago we were at the UN Human Rights Council and we were raising exactly the same issue that there has to be positive response against this sort of very clear human rights abuses both within Saudi Arabia and what is happening in Bahrain and elsewhere and unless something is done they actually create much bigger problem for the region.
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