Amnesty slams Saudi Arabia’s worsening human rights record

Amnesty International has called on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its “gross human rights violations.”

In a Tuesday statement delivered during the 31st meeting of the council, the London-based rights group said Saudi Arabia cannot be a UNHRC member state since it has failed to “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights and fully cooperate with the council” as required under the UN General Assembly Resolution 60/251.

“Since becoming a council member in 2014, Saudi Arabia has carried out gross and systematic violations of human rights causing significant deterioration of its human rights situation. It has also breached international humanitarian law in the conflict in Yemen,” the rights group added.

The Arab kingdom has also enforced an “abusive” anti-terror law, which equates peaceful protests with terrorism and allows it to hand down lengthy jail terms to peaceful critics and human rights activists after holding “deeply unfair” trials for them, the statement said.

Moreover, the regime in Riyadh has executed at least 319 people since 2014, including 47 in a mass execution early in January this year. According to the rights group, at least 40 percent of the executions were carried out “for offences which under international law must not be punishable by death.”

Saudi authorities also handed down death sentences to juvenile “offenders”, who were convicted solely based on confessions obtained under “torture”.

Amnesty added that the Saudi war on Yemen, which began in late March 2015, has led to thousands of casualties and destroyed civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, markets and factories, and could amount to “war crimes.” Riyadh has also prevented the formation of an independent international inquiry into the Yemen war, the rights group added.

“Amnesty International calls on this council, in light of the Saudi Arabian authorities’ unwavering record of committing gross and systematic human rights violations, to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its failure to live up to the basic requirements of membership of the council,” the statement said.

In September 2015, Faisal bin Hassan Trad, Saudi Arabia’s permanent representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva, was officially re-appointed as the head of the five-member Consultative Group, a significant UNHRC panel.

“It is scandalous that the UN chose a country that has beheaded more people this year than Daesh to be head of a key human rights panel. Petro-dollars and politics have trumped human rights,” Hillel C. Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, said at the time, adding, “This UN appointment is like making a pyromaniac into the town fire chief.”

The Saudi kingdom has long been under fire at the international level for its grim human rights record.

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