7 shocking facts about Saudi Arabia under ‘modernizing’ reign of King Abdullah

http://rt.com/news/226147-seven-facts-king-abdullah/

7 shocking facts about Saudi Arabia under ‘modernizing’ reign of King Abdullah
Published time: January 26, 2015 07:47

Taken aback by the fulsome praise that the recently deceased King Abdullah has garnered from world leaders, RT has decided to assess whether his record stands up to scrutiny.

READ MORE: Saudi King Abdullah dead – state TV

The majority of eulogies went beyond the requirements of diplomatic etiquette, while some epithets used by Western politicians made people believe they had stepped through the mirror. UK Prime Minister David Cameron said the 90-year-old monarch “strengthened understanding between faiths,” while IMF chief Christine Lagarde called him “a strong advocate of women,” albeit a “discreet” one. And almost all of the political grandees seemed to agree that the scion of the House of Saud, was – in the words of Tony Blair – “a skillful modernizer,” who “led his country into the future.”

1. No elections, no parties, no parliament, no dissent
In the same vein as previous decades, Saudi Arabia received the lowest possible marks for civil and political freedoms in the annual Freedom House rankings in 2014. The countries placed alongside it were North Korea, Turkmenistan, and smattering of the most brutal African dictatorships.

The regime’s disregard for any accountability to its people is brazen. There are no national elections, no parties, and no parliament – only a symbolic advisory chamber, known as Majlis al-Shura. Criticism is strictly forbidden: Only last year, prominent opposition activist Abd al-Kareem al-Khoder joined hundreds of the country’s political prisoners, when he was sentenced to eight years for demanding the changeover to a constitutional government. Just days before King Abdullah’s death, blogger Raif Badawi was given the first 50 of his 1,000 lashes – to which he was sentenced for calling for free speech on his blog.

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4. Law: Scimitars and whips
It may have become almost an online cliché to compare the legal systems of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic State, but the links between the two are fundamental. Both use the same ultra-conservative Hanbali school of jurisprudence, and many of the IS “judges” are Saudis, due to their familiarity with this concept of justice.



Eighty-seven people are thought to have been beheaded last year, which is in line with the national average over the past five years, despite ever-growing external pressure on Saudi Arabia. Only this month, a video emerged online, showing an executioner repeatedly hacking away at the neck of a screaming condemned woman as people watched open-mouthed. Unlike solving some of Saudi Arabia’s deep-seated problems, the curtailing of such “justice” would have just required one firm intervention from King Abdullah. It is clear, this was not a priority for him.

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