Asylum and the 'gay Saudi'

The New York Times has a report giving a few more details about the case of Ali Ahmad Asseri, the Saudi diplomat who is seeking asylum in the US on the grounds that he is gay. The Los Angeles Times also notes some negative reactions in the Arab media.

Writing in the Crossroads Arabia blog, John Burgess raises some questions about the affair and rightly points out that it has opened the door for all sorts of spin (eg against Islam in general). One angle is Asseri's reported friendship with a Jewish woman (cue accusations of Saudi antisemitism) though the New York Times says she is Israeli – which would make a difference where members of the Saudi diplomatic service are concerned.

Burgess concludes, though, that what is being reported is not sufficient to merit political asylum – which is where I disagree.

There may well be other aspects of the case that we don't know about, but Asseri has applied for asylum on the grounds that he is gay (he says the Saudis found out about it before he announced it to the US media) and therefore has a well-founded fear of persecution if he returns to the kingdom. 

That is the basis of his asylum claim, and it's also the basis on which the US authorities will have to consider it.

Mr Asseri appears to be the first Saudi ever to publicly declare himself gay so this is uncharted territory. But let's consider (as US officials will have to do) what might happen if he were forced to return home.

First, there's a lot of exaggerated talk about execution. I don't believe the Saudi authorities are raring to chop his head off at the earliest opportunity. They are more likely in a quandary and wishing the whole thing would go away.

The problem is that with the Saudi judicial system scarcely under state control – wayward judges, etc – it's very likely that under pressure from religious elements a case would be brought which could result in Asseri being sentenced to death if not actually executed. Some recent examples include the TV fortune-teller and the "Jeddah Casanova".

Because of the international publicity already attached to the case, it's unlikely he would be executed but he could easily be sentenced to imprisonment and flogging. In terms of asylum law, that also counts as persecution where the "crime" involved is homosexuality.

Aside from judicial persecution, and perhaps more importantly, there is the question of persecution by society. How can a man who is now very publicly known to be gay live openly in the kingdom (as opposed to the thousands who keep their sexuality secret)?

Never mind about the problem of finding someone willing to employ him and other likely acts of discrimination – it would be a Salman Rushdie kind of situation where he would need constant protection from possible attacks by extremists, and I very much doubt that the Saudi authorites are able (or willing) to provide that.

As a general rule, I would not encourage gay people to seek asylum: the goal should be to create conditions where they can live safely in their own countries. But there are some cases where asylum is the only solution and, on the basis of what we currently know about Mr Asseri, his case appears to be one of them.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 15 September 2010. Comment

Call for UN human rights mission in Yemen

The international Friends of Yemen group must do more than fight terrorism and provide economic aid, Christophe Wilcke of Human Right Watch argues in an article for the Yemen Times.

"If Yemen’s friends don’t tie economic assistance to improvements in the country’s rapidly deteriorating human rights conditions, they will have let the Yemeni people down."

He continues:

If Yemen’s friends don’t tie economic assistance to improvements in the country’s rapidly deteriorating human rights conditions, they will have let the Yemeni people down.

Under international scrutiny, President Ali Abdullah Saleh in February agreed on a truce with the northern Huthi rebels, ending the sixth round of fighting there in five years. He has also offered to hold talks with southern protesters, and to pursue al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula more vigorously. These actions seem to have bought silence from Yemen’s donors and allies even though serious human rights violations have escalated ... To prevent future abuses, there is a serious need to investigate human rights abuses in Yemen and hold those responsible to account ...

The Friends should also push the UN to establish a human rights monitoring and reporting mission in Yemen. The use of such missions in other conflicts has shown that these missions can act as a protective presence for civilians ...

If the Friends of Yemen want a stable and united Yemen, they need to do more than offer economic aid. They need to underline that respect for human rights is critical to maintaining peace in Sa’da, resolving southern grievances without further bloodshed, and confronting terrorism effectively. Yemen’s friends have the financial and diplomatic tools to do this. They should be honest with their Yemeni counterparts that they will not stand by San’a unless it ends these abuses.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 14 September 2010. Comment

Saudi juggling act on homosexuality

Saudi Arabia may be a miserable place to live, but it's not very often that a Saudi diplomat seeks refuge in the United States. The last time it happened was in 1994.

At the weekend, though, it emerged that Ali Ahmad Asseri, first secretary of the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, has applied for asylum in the US on the grounds that he is gay ... Read the full article at Comment Is Free.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 13 September 2010. Comment

Al-Qaeda issues its own 'wanted list'

Al-Qaeda's campaign to demoralise the security forces in souther Yemen has taken a new twist. 

Following a series of assassinations of officers, the militants have issued a list of 55 names – 31 state security officers, 15 members of the judiciary police and nine members of military intelligence, AFP reports.

Those named have been told "to repent in public at Zinjibar mosque [Abyan province] following Friday prayers or be killed". 

On Thursday, a military patrol was ambushed in Moudia/Mudiya in Abyan province. Some reports say one soldier was killed; another says three. 

AFP, quoting the SITE intelligence website, says al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for six recent attacks in Abyan. 

AFP adds that AQAP also "claimed a prominent role in 
deadly clashes in the Abyan province town of Loder [Lawdar] last month that exiled southern leaders had said involved autonomist and pro-independence activists".

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 11 September 2010. Comment

Bahrain warns 'preacher candidates'

The authorities in Bahrain have warned religious leaders not to "misuse" mosques during the coming parliamentary and municipal election campaign.

"All religious individuals who are standing in the elections will be prevented from speaking in mosques from the moment their application to run is accepted until the results are announced," Sheikh Khaled bin Ali Al Khalifa, the minister of justice and head of the electoral commission, said in remarks quoted by The National.

"We will not allow religious pulpits to be politically exploited … There will be no laxity with 'preacher candidates' who violate the law and the constitution."

Two unnamed imams who are running for parliament have already received warnings from the Sunni endowment directorate, the paper says.

More than 318,000 people out of a population of around 729,000 have been declared eligible to vote. The minimum voting age is 20.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has called on the authorities to immediately revoke their takeover of the Bahrain Human Rights Society (reported here yesterday). 

"Taking over the Bahrain Human Rights Society is one more sign that the government intends to silence any and all criticism of its abusive human rights practices," HRW said.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 10 September 2010. Comment

Bahrain seizes control of human rights group

In the continuing crackdown on dissent in Bahrain, the government has seized control of the Bahrain Human Rights Society, the Associated Press reports.

The organisation's director, Abdullah al-Derzai, has been dismissed and a replacement will be appointed temporarily, pending the election of a new board.

The BHRS, the first human rights organisation in Bahrain, was founded in 2001 and had been allowed to monitor parliamentary elections in 2006.

The government's takeover is thought to have occurred because the BHRS was considered too sympathetic to Bahrain's Shia majority.

A statement by the Ministry of Social Development said: "The society had moved away from being impartial for all sections of the Bahraini society that led to many complaints sent to the ministry."

The authorities have also been threatening another organisation, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (as I reported here yesterday).

The wave of repression in Bahrain has been widely linked to the parliamentary elections scheduled for next month. Bahrain's population is mainly Shia but the regime itself is Sunni. The Shia al-Wefaq bloc currently holds 17 out of 40 seats in parliament – so it's tempting to assume that the purpose of the crackdown is to prevent them winning a majority.

However, I have been following discussions on a Middle East bulletin board where scepticism has been expressed about this. The discussion was under Chatham House rules, so I'll summarise the gist of it without attribution.

First, the arrested opposition activists belong to parties which were already boycotting the election – i.e. their electoral prospects will not be affected one way or the other by their arrests.

Secondly, the crackdown could easily backfire, resulting in an increased vote for al-Wefaq.

Thirdly, the authorities are perfectly capable of fiddling the election to achieve their desired result, without the need for repression.

An alternative view is that the authorities have simply lost patience with the ongoing demonstrations and violence, and decided to act irrespective of the elections.

Another view is that it's part of a more orchestrated campaign by Sunni regimes in the region which are fearful of their own Shia communities and worried about Iranian influence. Bahrain's crackdown certainly seems to be regarded sympathetically by other Arab Gulf states. 

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 9 September 2010. Comment

Kuwaiti policewomen

Kuwait began recruiting women into its police force earlier this year and now has about 60. The move was highly controversial and is still opposed by some Islamist MPs. 

One MP, Mohammed Hayef, was quoted as saying their role is "an abuse to the female identity, a violation of Islamic ethics and a blind imitation of western and westernised countries". 

According to The National, female officers have also suffered taunts from Kuwaiti teenagers:

Some of the teens thought the inexperienced women would be an easy target for verbal abuse. 

They realised their mistake when the police hit back with a punishment out of the fashion-conscious miscreants' worst dreams. Dozens of insolent offenders were hauled to the police station to have their heads closely shaved with clippers. 

Retribution of sorts, I suppose, but summarily hauling kinds into the station to have their heads shaved doesn't sound much like professional policing.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 9 September 2010. Comment

Bahrain wants Britain to expel activists

The Gulf Cooperation Council – of which Bahrain is a member – has called on Britain to expel two Bahraini Shia opposition figures.

The pair – Hassan Mushaima of the Haq movement and Saeed al-Shehabi of the Bahrain Freedom Islamic Movement – are among 23 activists who were accused at the weekend of forming a terrorist network and plotting to overthrow Bahrain's Sunni-dominated government. They are currently in London.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that Britain is seeking consular access to one of the men arrested in Bahrain – Ja'afar al-Hasabi, who has dual Bahraini-British citizenship, and has allegedly been tortured.

Yesterday, Human Rights Watch called on the authorities to stop threatening Nabeel Rajab and Abd al-Hadi al-Khawaja, two prominent members of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR). A report in the pro-government al-Watan newspaper has claimed they are linked to a "terrorist network". 

"This crude and unfounded public attack on Rajab and al-Khawaja is particularly distressing in light of reports from the BCHR and others about interrogations of persons arrested in connection with this so-called network," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. 

"In addition to distressing allegations of torture, the interrogations appear to be focused on entirely legitimate contacts these individuals may have had with local and international rights groups."

The Committee to Protect Journalists has also protested at the detention of Ali Abdel Imam, founder of the BahrainOnline website (reported here yesterday). 

"The arrest of Ali Abdel Imam is a disturbing development in Bahrain's attempts to censor coverage of its crackdown on dissent," the CPJ said. "We call on the authorities to release him immediately and lift the gag order on journalists covering such arrests."

According to Abdel Imam's Facebook page, he was summoned to the offices of the National Security Apparatus (NSA) on Saturday. Next day, the official Bahrain News Agency claimed he had been arrested while "trying to flee to Qatar".

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 8 September 2010. Comment

'Fatwa' websites closed

Following the king's edict last month, Saudi Arabia is continuing its campaign against fatwas from unauthorised clerics. Asharq Alawsat reports that the kingdom's telecom regulator has shut down three websites for violating the royal decree:

Saad al-Shihri, an official at the Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission, said the regulator began blocking the websites on Wednesday. He said authorities also have drawn up a list of clerics whose services break the decree, and that they have been sent messages "warning them to comply."

Among those breaking the ban are clerics who offer fatwas via text messages, some for as much as $3 per message, al-Shihri said. Regulators have already started barring such services.

On August 26, the king reprimanded Yousef al Ahmed, a conservative scholar, who spoke out against employing female cashiers in supermarkets.

Despite opposition from the more reactionary religious quarters, the Saudi labour ministry says it is continuing to issue permits for women to work as cashiers in shopping centres.

The Crossroads Arabia blog comments:

I’m mystified by arguments that having women work in this capacity is haram. Women certainly worked in the markets in the time of the Prophet, and ever since. You can go to various market stalls (or blankets) in any of the souks of major cities and find them operated by Bedouin women. Does the fact that this is not haram suggest that the practice is, actually, fine? Or might it be a perception that Bedouin women are somehow less than human, thus exempt from Islamic principles? I’m pleased to see the Ministry of Labour standing up to the troglodytes.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 7 September 2010. Comment

Pre-election crackdown in Bahrain

Tension in Bahrain ahead of the elections scheduled for next month. 

Twenty-three people, reportedly Shia activists, have been accused of "forming an illegal organisation" aiming to "overthrow the government and dissolve the constitution", inciting people to "overthrow and change the political system of the country", fundraising and planning terrorist acts, and other offences under Bahrain’s 2006 anti-terrorism law.

The authorities have also decided to reassert state control over the kingdom’s mosques. "Regaining control of the pulpits so they are not hostage to incompetent politicians or clerics who have lost their way ... is the starting point for developing a sound religious orientation," Crown Prince Salman is quoted as saying.

An important part of the background to this is that the tiny Gulf state has a Sunni regime ruling a mainly Shia population. There are no official figures but the Shia are thought to outnumber the Sunnis by about two to one.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Alexandra Sandels explains:

Shiites hold 17 of 40 seats [in parliament], and Sunnis fear they could gain a majority. Human rights organisations estimate that more than 250 Shiites, mostly youths, have been arrested in the ongoing security crackdown, which has sparked unrest in the streets.

Bahrain and its Saudi patrons may fear that Iran could use the island nation's Shiites during the upcoming elections to further its influence ...

Meanwhile, Saudi Jeans reports the arrest of Ali Abdulemam, a prominent Bahraini blogger who is accused of spreading "false news" on his website, BahrainOnline.org. More details here.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 7 September 2010. Comment

Blaming Arabic

"Approximately 50% of Arabic-speaking schoolchildren in Israel are suspected to have learning disabilities," according to the Edmond J Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities at the University of Haifa. "These children face lifelong stigmatisation, immense academic difficulties, and even expulsion from the formal education system," it continues.

The research centre blames some of the difficulties on "the unique characteristics of the Arabic language" (as opposed to Hebrew, English, etc). In Arabic, it says, "diglossia, orthographic and morphological complexity, diacritics and alterations in letter form based on location in the word contribute to serious delays and failures in reading and writing". 

The centre does acknowledge that "cultural, societal and familial aspects inherent in the Arab sector also constitute important factors in understanding the learning difficulties existing within this population", but the problems allegedly caused by the Arabic alphabet are at the centre of its latest research.

A team led by Professor Zohar Eviatar studied a group of 40 Hebrew-speaking university students, some of whom "also spoke and read Arabic well". Hebrew and Arabic letters were flashed on to a screen to see how quickly and accurately the students could recognise them, and to determine which side of the brain was used in the recognition process.

Their conclusion, basically, is that written Arabic is more difficult than other languages for the brain to cope with: "Because of the visual complexity of Arabic orthography, the brain's right hemisphere is not involved in decoding the text in the first stages of learning to read."

The detailed findings have been published in the journal Neuropsychology but they are summarised by the BBC and in a 
press release from the University of Haifa.

Dr Raphiq Ibrahim, one of the research team, has also investigated the question: "What is unique in the brain of an Arabic speaker?"

According to Dr Ibrahim, the Arabic reading skills and comprehension of Arabic-speaking students in Israel and Arab countries have shown a lower level of proficiency compared to Hebrew-speaking counterparts in Hebrew and to other native speakers in their native languages.

These difficulties were attributed to the fact that they learn colloquial (spoken) Arabic alongside the mostly-written Modern Standard Arabic.

"This makes learning to read in Arabic a double mission, whereby children are expected to acquire in parallel an auditory linguistic system as well as a complex orthographic-visual language system," Dr Ibrahim said.

I'll let others judge the quality of this research. The Angry Arab has raised some questions about it, labelling it a "colonial study". 

The Safra centre makes clear on its website that its aim is to promote understanding of "learning disabilities in the Arab sector" and remedy them. However, it's easy to see how others might abuse it for political purposes by claiming that if Arabs are educationally disadvantaged in Israel and elsewhere, it's their own fault for speaking Arabic.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 5 September 2010. Comment

Misery of the housemaids (14)

It's good to see the endemic ill-treatment of domestic workers in the Middle East finally getting some attention from the mainstream international media. Under the headline "Little better than slavery", this week's Economist says:

Huge numbers of migrant domestic workers, mostly from Asia and Africa, are employed throughout the region. Some 1.5m work in Saudi Arabia, 660,000 in Kuwait and 200,000 in Lebanon. Many work very long hours and receive little food, no time off and pay that is a fraction of any minimum wage, if it materialises at all. 

Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based group, says at least one domestic worker died every week in Lebanon between January 2007 and August 2008. Almost half were suicides and many were as a result of falling from high buildings, often while trying to escape their employers. 

Mistreatment is so widespread that the Philippines, Ethiopia and Nepal no longer let their citizens go to Lebanon to work as maids, though such bans have had little effect.

The reason for this sudden interest is the widely-reported case of 49-year-old Lahanda Purage Ariyawathie, who returned home to Sri Lanka from Saudi Arabia recently – and had to have at least 24 nails and needles surgically removed from her body.

She alleges that the nails were embedded by her Saudi employer and his wife, in a bizarre form of torture.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been documenting reports about the abuse of housemaids fairly systematically (as has the Angry Arab blog) but I refrained from writing about Ms Ariyawathie's story when it first surfaced because I wasn't sure whether to believe it. I hesitated mainly because it's so unlike the types of abuse normally reported.

Today, Arab News raised some doubts about the story and said that Ms Ariyawathie did not seek medical help until several days after her arrival in Sri Lanka. If so, why the delay? 

I do hope the Saudi and Sri Lankan authorities will investigate the case thoroughly. If true, the story is of course appalling but until more is known it may be unwise to jump to any conclusions.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese newspaper, al-Akhbar (in Arabic), reports the death of a Kenyan woman who fell from the sixth floor of a building, apparently trying to escape from her employer by climbing down a rope.

The same paper also reports legal action against the employer of an Ethiopian maid in Lebanon who suffered a non-lethal fall from a balcony almost two years ago.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 2 September 2010. Comment

UPDATE, 3 September: An interview with Ms Ariyawathie was published here in The Sunday Leader. 

Analysing the Yemeni problem

A couple of useful articles about Yemen in the September issue of The Majalla. In the first, Professor Fawaz Gerges of the London School of Economics discusses Yemen's summer of discontent. He writes:

What is alarming about the growing brazenness and activism of [al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] is its linkage to Yemen’s deepening social and political crises, cleavages and stagnant state institutions. For example, AQAP is manipulating and leveraging its tribal connections in the south to gain a foothold in the rising separatist movement there. This strategy comes at a critical time. A secessionist movement in the south has gained momentum, with a sizable segment of southern public opinion demanding a divorce from the forced union imposed by the north in the early 1990s.

What the al-Qaeda branch has tried to do is to submerge and embed itself in these raging local conflicts, particularly in the south, mainly in the Shabwa and adjacent Abyan provinces, and to position itself as the spearhead of opposition and armed resistance to the central government in Sana’a. For example, just a few days ago, government forces battled the opposition and al-Qaeda elements to regain control over the city of Loudar [or Lawdar] in Abyan province, leaving dozens dead from both camps and forcing thousands of people from their homes.

The Majalla also has an interview with the Yemeni-Swiss scholar, Elham Manea, who makes some pertinent points about  the Houthi conflict, the baneful influence of religious "scientific institutes" and the weakness of the Yemeni state:

The tribal sector has always complicated the Yemeni context and the problem has to do with the fact that Yemen has a weak state. This has led to a situation in which you have areas that are pockets of tribal rule. The central government had no authority over these areas. The tribal factor is a problem, but one can try at least to use the tribal system in an advantageous way. However, I do believe that it will not be possible to create a strong state in Yemen without breaking the tribal institutions as independent from the state. Yemen needs a coherent policy towards the tribal system.

On the Houthi conflict:

Until today, I would say that the government has not been part of the solution. In addition to the weak capacity of the state, if you look at the way the conflict started you realize that the Yemeni leadership supported the Houthis in the past before they rebelled against the government. The government did this as part of their own politics of survival. The Yemeni leadership was trying to weaken the Islah Party, an Islamic party that presented a strong opposition to the government at the time. In attempting to weaken the Islah Party by supporting a counter Zaydi group, the government’s policies backfired. 

Today when you look at the issue of the Houthis in the Saada region you realize that those who were supporting the Houthis before were tribes that did not necessarily share the same sectarian belief of the Houthis. But they supported them as a response to the heavy-handed policies of the army and their own perception that the government had not delivered services to their region.

On the "institutes":

In my opinion Yemen has lost a whole generation because of the type of education that was provided through what were called “scientific institutes.” These institutes were religious institutes preaching a salafi and wahhabi interpretation, which is extremist and pro jihad. We lost this generation also because this type of school came within a context when North and South Yemen were competing against each other. At the same time, North Yemen and Saudi Arabia were trying to combat the communist ideology of the South of Yemen. So now we have a generation that is more or less formed by the extremist ideology of wahhabism. I personally wouldn’t be surprised to see that there is a significant portion of young people who might be sympathetic to the message of Bin Laden.

These institutions were closed after 9/11, which was a good step. Nevertheless, what is very surprising is the example of a university like al-Imam. This university is led by Zindani, a well-known Salafia sheikh with connections to Osama bin Laden. He has been known for being sympathetic to Bin Laden’s message, yet the university is allowed to work freely and without any government supervision. I would be surprised if this university taught its students a message of tolerance. This is why I say that until today the government has not acted in a manner that corresponds to its words. If you are really serious about combating extremism in Yemen then you should address the root of the problem.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 1 September 2010. Comment

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