GCHR Report: Saudi Arabia - Human Rights Defender Mohammed Abdullah Al-Otaibi Calls On The International Community To Protect Him

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Apr 24, 2017 Saudi Arabia
[Gulf Center for Human Right. Image from gc4hr.org.] [Gulf Center for Human Right. Image from gc4hr.org.]

GCHR Report: Saudi Arabia - Human Rights Defender Mohammed Abdullah Al-Otaibi Calls On The International Community To Protect Him

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following report was published by the Gulf Center for Human Rights on 23 April 2017.]

Saudi human rights defender Mohammed Abdullah Al-Otaibi has called for international support after being forced to leave Saudi Arabia for Qatar.

He said, "I call on the international community to protect me under the 1951 UN Convention and its 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees and to either resettle me in Qatar or to be resettled in a third country because my life is in danger." Al-Otaibi was forced to leave his country, and arrived in Qatar on 30 March 2017, after his case was referred to the Specialised Criminal Court, which was set up to deal with terrorism-related cases but is often used to try human rights defenders and other activists.

Al-Otaibi, 49, began his human rights work in Saudi Arabia in 1996. He participated in several online forums and discussions between 1999 and 2016. He also signed a number of statements demanding the protection of civil and human rights of citizens, the release of prisoners of conscience and reform between 2006 and 2015.

He was first arrested on 01 January 2009 and charged with attempting to initiate a peaceful protest against the attack on Gaza and was released only on 11 June 2012. He had remained in prison for almost three years and seven months without a trial. A travel ban was imposed on him after his release for five years until 01 January 2017.
  
In April 2013, Al-Otaibi co-founded the Union for Human Rights in Riyadh, whose main objectives were to defend the rights of citizens, spread the culture of human rights, abolish the death penalty, and to strengthen the role of women in society. After 28 days of hard work within this organisation, that included monitoring the trials of human rights defenders and releasing explanatory statements about the hearings, and the publication of appeals on human rights violations, Al-Otaibi was summoned by the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution in Riyadh. He was summoned along with the other founding members of the Union for Human Rights, Abdullah Al-Attawi, Abdullah Faisal Al-Harbi, and Mohammed Ayeth Al-Otaibi. They were called upon to freeze the work of their organisation in return for their freedom and the promise not to refer the case to trial, which forced them to agree so that they could go and work individually and in their personal capacities.  

Before the summons, they had sent a letter to the Minister of Labour and Social Affairs asking him to give a permit for their organisation to work. The Minister replied in a letter saying, "the Ministry does not have a system that allows human rights organisations to work and it proposes to wait until the approval of the civil society law." The civil associations’ law remained in the Council of Ministers for seven years after it was sent by the Shura Council in October 2008 – which took two years to review it – and therefore was not put in place until November 2015. Yet, this law still doesn’t recognize the work of human rights.

Al-Otaibi continued his human rights activities between 2013 and 2016, when he issued several appeals and reports on human rights violations, prisoners of conscience and trials of human rights defenders. Among his work was a statement in 2014 entitled "Seeing the Solution in Qatif Events" in which he showed his support to the right to peaceful protest and opposed the use of violence. He also participated in a number of television interviews, including in 2014 on Al-Hurra TV news channel in which he talked about the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) for Saudi Arabia that year.

On 15 May 2015, three weeks before his marriage, he was summoned by the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution in Riyadh, where he met with the president. He was asked to freeze his human rights work, especially his media appearances and publishing statements, or face detention and a trial. He agreed to freeze these activities but continued to support behind the scenes various human rights activities.

On 08 December 2016, he was referred to the Specialised Criminal Court where he was charged with several counts, including working in an unlicensed society, signing and publishing statements, practicing human rights activities which forced him to leave the country to Qatar.

The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) believes that Mohammed Abdullah Al-Otaibi was targeted solely for his peaceful and legitimate human rights activities. GCHR considers that Al-Otaibi faces the risk of forced deportation from Qatar to Saudi Arabia, where he faces arrest, unfair trial, and the possibility of torture, and demands that international mechanisms, including the United Nations, provide him with immediate protection.

The Gulf Centre for Human Rights calls upon the Qatari government and other governments with influence in the region and international mechanisms, including the UN, to:

1.     Provide full protection to human rights defender Mohammed Al-Otaibi as long as he lives in Qatar;

2.     Prevent his forcible deportation to Saudi Arabia from his residence in Qatar; and

3.     Allow him to leave to a safe third country as soon as possible.

GCHR respectfully reminds you that the United Nations Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, adopted by consensus by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1998, recognises the legitimacy of the activities of human rights defenders, their right to freedom of association and to carry out their activities without fear of reprisals. We would particularly draw your attention to Article 6 (c) which states that: “Everyone has the right, individually and in association with others: (c) To study, discuss, form and hold opinions on the observance, both in law and in practice, of all human rights and fundamental freedoms and, through these and other appropriate means, to draw public attention to those matters” and to Article 12.2, which provides that “the State shall take all necessary measures to ensure the protection by the competent authorities of everyone, individually and in association with others, against any violence, threats, retaliation, de facto or de jure adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of his or her legitimate exercise of the rights referred to in the present Declaration.”
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Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412