-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storyprint.cfm?storyID=1191738
}}}>Begin
Monday March 18, 2002
Grieving families furious at police for fire deaths in Saudi Arabia
15.03.2002 -
RIYADH - Saudi media, in a rare criticism of the kingdom's powerful religious police,
have accused the force of hampering efforts to rescue 15 girls who died inside a
blazing school.
Saudi media and families of the victims have been incensed over the death of the
girls in the fire that gutted the school on Monday in the Muslim holy city of Mecca.
Most of the girls were crushed to death in a stampede as they tried to flee the blaze.
The al-Eqtisadiah daily newspaper said firemen scuffled with members of the
religious police, also known as "mutaween", after they tried to keep the girls inside
the burning building because they were not wearing headscarves and abayas (black
robes) as required by the kingdom's strict interpretation of the tenets of Islam.
The English-language Saudi Gazette, in a front-page report yesterday, quoted
witnesses as saying that members of the police, known as the Commission for the
Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, had stopped men who tried to help the
schoolgirls.
They had warned: "It is a sinful to approach them."
One civil defence officer told al-Eqtisadiah he saw three members of the religious
police "beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they
were not wearing the abaya".
"We told them that the situation was very critical and did not allow for such
behaviour.
"But they shouted at us and refused to move away from the gates," the newspaper
quoted the officer as saying.
The father of one of the dead girls charged that the school watchman even refused
to open the gate to let the girls out, the Saudi Gazette reported.
"Lives could have been saved had they not been stopped by members of the
Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice," the newspaper said.
The feared mutaween roam the streets of the conservative kingdom wielding sticks
to enforce dress codes and sex segregation and to ensure prayers are performed on
time.
Those who refuse to obey their orders are usually beaten and sometimes jailed.
- REUTERS
�Copyright 2002, NZ Herald
End<{{{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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