Maj. Gen. Ali Al-Harithy, the director general of prisons, said yesterday that prisoners in the Kingdom were not tortured or beaten on a large scale, and that beatings were "individual cases," which should not be generalized.
Al-Harithy was referring to a report released last week by the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) in Saudi Arabia. "Regulations, directives and the constitution state clearly that there should not be any violations against prisoners. ... There are, however, individual mistakes, but that rarely happens. And if it does happen, then prisoner rights are fulfilled by punishing offenders," he said.
In its first report on human rights in Saudi Arabia, the NSHR said some people remain in prison even after they have completed their term. It said in some cases inmates were beaten or tortured for confessions and sometimes they missed appeal court hearings because prison authorities forgot to remind them.
I'm used to reading stories--there are so many of them--about Saudis abusing human rights, so the last part of this paragraph naturually caught my eye:
Al-Harithy criticized visits by foreign human rights groups to the Kingdom, which recently included prison visits by Human Rights Watch. "We do not need foreign organizations to come here and teach our sons and daughters human rights. We are obliged to protect human rights by ourselves without anyone coming from outside and implying that we have to care about human rights in 'the land of humanity'," he said.
(Bold print emphasis is mine.)
Land of humanity? Saudi Arabia? Hey general, drinking alcohol is against the law in your nation.
Or perhaps it was a typo. Perhaps General Al-Harithy meant "land of inhumanity."
Related post: Saudi Arabia's "Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice"
Technorati tags:
Saudi Arabia 
Saudis 
Wahhabis 
human rights 
prisoner abuse 
المملكة 
prisons 
torture
No comments:
Post a Comment