Saudi torture of women rampant, says Amnesty

The statistics say it all. In just 10 years, 28 women have been executed in Saudi Arabia, six of them in the past 14 months, without fair trials, beheaded or shot through the head - the Saudis will not say which - often on the basis of uncorroborated confessions. The most recent was Mukhtiara Khadem Hussein, a Pakistani woman judicially executed on 18 July because of a conviction for drug trafficking.

The statistics say it all. In just 10 years, 28 women have been executed in Saudi Arabia, six of them in the past 14 months, without fair trials, beheaded or shot through the head - the Saudis will not say which - often on the basis of uncorroborated confessions. The most recent was Mukhtiara Khadem Hussein, a Pakistani woman judicially executed on 18 July because of a conviction for drug trafficking.

Of these, 17 were foreign nationals, a "disproportionate percentage" since foreign nationals are only 25 per cent of the population. A Saudi woman was beheaded in public, according to independent sources only seconds before her daughter was executed for the same crime: murdering her husband, the daughter's father. Noura bint Ubeid bin Aqla Zuebi and Aisha bint Muhammed bin Daydan bin Aqlaa Al-Zuebi were executed on 11 December 1992 in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, scarcely 18 months after the West "saved" Saudi Arabia from Iraqi aggression.

For the second time in six months, Amnesty International has turned its humanitarian searchlight on Saudi Arabia's justice "system" - the quotation marks are essential - demanding to know why the kingdom's judiciary and regal authorities should subject women to arbitrary detention, arrest, flogging and execution. An Amnesty report last March on human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia provoked the fury of the regime - but, at the least, a limited discussion within the ruling élite. The condemnation of the pro-Saudi press was predictable.

Today's Amnesty document, a painful account of the torture, imprisonment and punishment of women in the Kingdom, will undoubtedly produce similar results. Tales of the rape of Third World domestic servants by Saudi nationals and the brutal lashing of unnumbered Filipino women by so-called "judicial" courts will enrage the Saudi authorities. So they should.

Here, for example, is the account of a 53-year-old Filipino woman, Violetta Calminero, who endured 150 lashes. "The three sessions of 50 lashes were administered in the space of five days ... the lashes were administered in a room with three mutawaeen [religious police] sitting at a table. I was made to lean over a chair fully clothed with my abaya [a gown]... I noticed that if women squirmed or moved, the lashes became more intense." Other women talked of being beaten by "religious" police after their arrests, or of being assaulted by husbands who demanded divorce. "Sometimes my husband would drag me around the floor by my hair," a Saudi woman told Amnesty. "There were constant beatings with the head-rope. Towards the end, my husband would lock the bedroom door at night, to stop me [supposedly] going to have sex with a neighbour."

Saudi Arabia, Amnesty says in its latest report, is required to act in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognises "the inherent dignity and ... inalienable rights of all members of the human family", yet the Saudi authorities have "consistently failed to investigate allegations of abuses against women."

It quotes religious authorities as justifying a ban on women driving, moving freely outside the Kingdom or receiving a full education. A woman can, for instance, be a major shareholder in a company but is not allowed to attend a board of directors meeting.

What Amnesty does not say - given Saudi Arabia's oil-unique relationship with the United States, its political dependence on American arms in the Gulf and its fear of America's "terrorist" enemies - is that not the slightest pressure will be exerted upon its authorities to abide by human rights laws. Even when tens of thousands of American troops were based in the Kingdom after Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait, discrimination against women continued unabated.