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Falling Saudi regime stepping up clampdown on dissent: Analyst

Tuesday, 07 February 2017 3:24 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 07 February 2017 3:24 PM ]

File photo shows Saudi riot police in face-off with protesters in Saudi Arabia's eastern city of Qatif. (Photo by Reuters)

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has warned about alarming rise in Saudi Arabia’s repressive measures against peaceful dissidents and activists. In a Monday report, HRW said Saudi courts have convicted at least 20 dissident writers and human rights campaigners since 2011.

The Saudi kingdom has stepped up politically-motivated arrests, prosecution and conviction of activists and protesters because the regime sees itself on the verge of collapse and tries to delay it, said Shabbir Hassanally, activist and Islamic scholar from London.

The Saudi regime is suppressing any opposition because “it knows it is on the way out,” Hassanally said on Tuesday.

“Any regime that cannot tolerate even the mildest criticism proves that it’s sitting on very, very weak foundations,” he noted, adding that the Saudi “entity is self-destructing internally; it’s falling apart.”

“When you have an entity that cannot tolerate peaceful protests, any sort of peaceful resistance or discussion; then, they close all the doors and the only that is left is that of active resistance,” he added.

The Islamic scholar also predicted that the Saudi entity would not exist “beyond 2020.”

Undermining Saudi authorities’ claim that they are representing the real Islam, the activist argued that the Saudis do not observe many tenets of the holy religion and practice “insane interpretation of Islam called Wahhabism.”

“Saudi Arabia has the same relationship to Islam as the Israelis have to Judaism meaning that neither of these two are connected” to Islam or Judaism, the analyst stated.

The United States and Britain have supported the Al Saud’s grip of power in Saudi Arabia and even provided the Saudi authorities with weapons to suppress their opponents, the analyst said.

Hassanally went on to say that the Western world is “propping up” the Saudi regime, while the Western countries know the Wahhabi ideology is nurturing extremism in the region, because “the West needs this boogeyman in order to keep this rising tide of Zionist Islamophobia.”

Saudi Arabia has defied international demands to stop repressing activists and protesters, who have been conducting protests against the regime in Riyadh since 2011.

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