** Milis Nasional Indonesia ppi-india **
Arrests make mockery of Saudi reform talk
Mai Yamani IHT Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Empty promises
LONDON Saudi Arabia's latest high-profile public relations operation to sell its
vision of political reform to a skeptical West has collapsed after a fresh crackdown
on leading intellectuals.
.
Four members of Saudi Arabia's much hyped Consultative Council, an embryonic
Parliament, had been flown to London to wax lyrical about their country's reformist
credentials. They were feted by politicians and given a sympathetic hearing by local
journalists. But they had barely unpacked their suitcases back home when the
authorities shot their own fox.
.
In a sweep of five regions last Tuesday - Jidda, Riyadh, Dhahran, Al Qatif and Dammam
- Saudi police arrested 13 leading liberals and academics, one of whom was
humiliatingly detained during a university lecture and handcuffed in front of his
students.
.
All had petitioned the government for reforms but had scrupulously professed loyalty
to the state. Several had even held face-to-face meetings with an apparently
sympathetic Crown Prince Abdullah. More important, they represented the one moderate
section of Saudi society that could have helped the royal family introduce the reforms
they claimed to want - and thereby stemmed the rising levels of terrorist violence.
.
Seven were later released after they pledged not to petition for reform or talk to
reporters. The remaining leaders were refusing to cooperate without legal
representation.
.
By arresting such widely respected, moderate figures, the government has made a
mockery of its claims about moving the political process forward, its promises of a
more open society and its desire to play a full part in global bodies such as the
World Trade Organization.
.
The arrests came just a week after the Saudi government announced the formation of the
National Committee for Human Rights, whose members were expected to travel to Geneva
to explain their new role to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. They will
now have plenty of explaining to do.
.
Among those detained was Matruk al-Falih, a former lecturer at King Saud University in
Riyadh, dismissed for writing an article pressing for urgent reforms after the Sept.
11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Mohamed Said Taib, also
arrested, is a lawyer and publisher, jailed two years ago for daring to write a
critical letter to the same Consultative Council, whose members were so warmly greeted
two weeks ago in London.
.
After a State Department spokesman condemned the detentions last week as "inconsistent
with the kind of forward progress that reform-minded people are looking for," the
Saudi authorities insisted that the arrests were an internal matter. Saud al-Faisal,
the Saudi foreign minister, told Secretary of State Colin Powell during the weekend
that Saudi Arabia would manage its own affairs without any external interference.
.
So far the authorities have not hinted at any charges. There is widespread speculation
that the detainees had enraged the royal family by calling for a separate human rights
committee, independent of the government. Worse, they had published demands for a
constitutional monarchy in Saudi Arabia, putting them on a collision course with the
hard-line interior minister, Prince Nayef.
.
But there is another worrying aspect to the arrests. They illustrate a serious split
within the royal family, whose own reformists, led by Abdullah, were prepared to
tolerate criticism and for a time were capable of protecting the critics. This is no
longer the case. Nayef and some of his brothers have now asserted their hard-line
control. The new message is clear: There are no seats available in the Saudi national
dialogue for moderate Islamists and liberals.
.
At least one constituency, though, will applaud the arrests. The Wahhabi religious
establishment, with its plethora of online fatwas and unrelenting dogma against the
West, will see the move as an essential act of house cleaning, ridding the country of
any infectious notions of democracy.
.
That alone should give the West pause for thought. Those jailed in Saudi Arabia were
emboldened by Western talk of democracy spreading throughout the Arab world. They
wanted to move the process forward. They may even have believed that the U.S. plan for
democracy in the greater Middle East would offer them some protection inside their own
country.
.
As ministers and leaders from the Group of Eight industrial countries prepare to
consider the American blueprint at their summit meeting in June, they should think
long and hard about the Saudi arrests - and about how much they should trust the Saudi
government's promises of reform.
.
Mai Yamani is a research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs,
London.
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