Foreign AffairsWritten evidence from Human Rights Watch
A submission from Human Rights Watch to the UK Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) as part of its inquiry into the “FCO’s foreign policy towards Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, in the broader context of relations between the UK and the Gulf States”.
Human Rights Watch welcomes this FAC Inquiry. It is long overdue for the UK parliament to examine and debate UK relations towards these important countries. The main focus of our submission is FCO policy on human rights towards Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other Gulf states. We identify some very serious rights abuses in each of these countries and make some recommendations for how the FCO can better help protect and promote human rights there.
Summary
Human Rights Watch believes that the FCO and other parts of the UK government often downplay the serious and systematic human rights abuses taking place in these countries and they fail to make human rights concerns a sufficiently high priority in their bilateral relations, regularly subordinating them to trade or security concerns.
Because the UK has taken a strong stance on human rights abuses elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, its failure to do so with these states is a worrying example of double standards, which undercuts the UK’s influence and credibility on human rights across the region and towards other parts of the world, a point also made by the FAC in its recent report on the Arab Spring.
Although the FCO does include Saudi Arabia in its “country of concern” section in its annual report on human rights and democracy, the FCO appears very reluctant to press the Saudi authorities on human rights issues and it rarely makes public statements of concern about the rights situation within Saudi. In the course of 2012, the Saudi authorities stepped up arrests and trials of peaceful dissidents and responded to demonstrations by Shia citizens with lethal force. Authorities frequently prosecute peaceful dissidents before Specialized Criminal Courts, set up to try terrorism suspects.
Saudi authorities continue to treat Saudi women as second class citizens, where the male guardianship system requires women to seek the written permission of a male relative—father, husband or brother—to take up employment, access some forms of medical care or move around the country. There are also widespread and systematic abuses against the country’s 9 million foreign domestic workers.
It is indefensible that the FCO continues to exclude Bahrain from its “countries of concern” section in the annual report on human rights and democracy. Despite serious ongoing abuses in Bahrain and a failure on the part of the Bahraini authorities to hold rights abusers accountable, the FCO continues to talk up the reformist credentials of the Bahraini government, when the evidence for this is lacking.
The FCO has said little about the serious human rights abuses being committed by state authorities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and in Oman.
Although rarely articulated publicly, the FCO’s reluctance to be more critical or assertive about human rights abuses in these countries is assumed to be linked to concerns that pushing their leaders too hard might be destabilizing, as well as the UK’s large economic interests in the region—as a source of oil and as a market for exports, especially military exports. However on the issue of stability, there is a strong case that it is the unwillingness of the existing Gulf states to liberalise politically and to permit peaceful opposition and dissent which creates the greatest risk of social instability and tension. The FCO should be pressing the case more assertively for reform, including respect for basic international human rights standards, especially the rights of women and ethnic and religious communities.
Recommendations
The FCO should make human rights concerns a significantly higher priority than at present in its bilateral relations with all the countries of the Gulf. It should take a strong and consistent position on rights abuses in these countries in forums like the UN Human Rights Council. It should press all of these countries to allow regular and unfettered access to UN special rapporteurs and for these countries to accede to and comply with key international human rights agreements. The FCO should make a particular effort to highlight the situation facing human rights defenders in these countries. Trade and investment agreements with the countries of the region should be consistent with the UK’s international human rights obligations, including a requirement on UK companies investing there to undertake appropriate due diligence, so as not to be complicit in rights abuses. UK military or police training for the security or police forces of the Gulf states should be approached with great caution. Where it occurs, it should comply fully with international human rights standards. UK assistance should not be provided to forces known to engage in rights abuses. The FCO should also ensure that the UK government does not permit the export of military equipment to Gulf states that might be used for repression or the abuse of human rights.
About Human Rights Watch
1. Human Rights Watch is an independent, international human rights organisation. We document the denial and abuse of human rights in some 90 countries around the world. We use our research to draw attention to rights abuses and press governments to adopt policies to better respect, protect and fulfil these rights. We also press for those guilty of serious human rights abuses to be held accountable for their crimes.
2. We have worked on Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the Gulf for more than two decades. We have published numerous in-depth reports on these countries documenting serious human rights violations including systematic torture and ill-treatment, due process violations, suppression of peaceful demonstrations, and prosecution of human rights defenders and activists.
UK Policy Towards Saudi Arabia
3. Saudi Arabia has an extremely poor record on human rights, but the FCO’s response to these abuses is generally weak and any FCO criticism is very rarely made publicly.
4. The Saudi authorities impose severe and unrelenting restrictions on freedom of expression, belief and assembly. In the course of 2012, Saudis have been arrested for peaceful criticism, human rights activism and for disobeying clerics by calling for the release or fair trial of detainees. Saudi authorities arrested and prosecuted human rights activists including Mohammed al-Bajadi, a founder of the Saudi Association for Civil and Political Rights. Charges including “being in touch with international organizations” have been made against other rights activists including Abdulla al-Hamid, Mohammed Fahd al-Qahtani, and Walid Abu al-Khair. Authorities frequently prosecute peaceful dissidents before Specialized Criminal Courts, set up to try terrorism suspects.
5. Under the discriminatory Saudi guardianship system, women are treated as second class citizens—forbidden from travelling, conducting official business or undergoing certain medical procedures without the permission of their male guardians. A recent example illustrates the cruelty and absurdity of this policy. In July 2012, after a car chase by the religious police left the driver dead and his wife and daughter in a critical condition, the hospital authorities in Baha postponed amputating the wife’s hand because she had no male legal guardian to authorise the procedure.
6. In the course of 2012, the Saudi Ministry of Labor issued a number of decrees regulating women’s work in clothing stores, amusement parks, food preparation, and as cashiers; but the decrees reinforced strict gender segregation in the workplace, mandating that female workers not interact with men. Although public pressure (including from Human Rights Watch) persuaded the Saudi authorities to field two women in the team for the London Olympics, women and girls remain effectively banned from sports within the kingdom. Strict clothing requirements for women continue to be publicly enforced and women remain banned from driving.
7. The Saudi system also permits major rights abuses against the 9 million foreign domestic workers present in the country, who constitute half the workforce. Many suffer multiple abuses and labour exploitation, sometimes amounting to slavery-like conditions. The kafala (sponsorship) system ties migrant workers’ residency permits to sponsoring employers, whose written consent is required for workers to change employers or leave the country. Saudi employers regularly abuse this power to confiscate passports, withhold wages and force migrants to work against their will. Domestic workers, usually women, also frequently endure forced confinement, the denial of food and psychological, physical and sexual abuse.
8. Saudi Arabia does not tolerate public worship by adherents of religions other than Islam and systematically discriminates against its Muslim religious minorities, in particular Shia and Ismailis. Authorities in 2012 arrested and prosecuted Hamza Kashgari and Mohammed Salama for their peaceful expression of opinions on religious matters that differed from the views of Saudi religious authorities.
UK Policy Towards Bahrain
9. Human Rights Watch has been particularly critical of UK policy towards Bahrain over the last year and more. Although the FCO does criticise human rights abuses in Bahrain, including in public statements, it tends to do so in general terms and in a context of talking up progress in Bahrain and commending Bahraini authorities for their purported commitment to reform. For example, in the box on Bahrain in the most recent FCO annual report on human rights and democracy, the FCO mentions approvingly the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) but there is no reference to its conclusions that torture by the Bahraini authorities was systematic or that abuses occurred within a “culture of impunity”.
10. The FCO report does not mention that the Bahraini authorities have failed to date to investigate or prosecute more than a small number of security officers for serious rights abuses such as torture and unlawful killings, almost all of them low-ranking and non-Bahraini. Nor is there any reference to the key BICI recommendation to review military court sentences and free those convicted purely for calling for substantial political change—a category that includes the 20 protest leaders sentenced to lengthy prison terms, some of them for life. On September 4, 2012, a civilian appeals court upheld the military court’s convictions and long sentences of the 20 protest leaders.
11. There is also reference to “an independent National Commission to oversee implementation of the BICI report” and to the National Human Rights Commission. The members of the first were handpicked by the King, so it is hardly independent, and the second has done almost nothing since it was established.
12. The Bahraini authorities continue to seriously limit freedom of assembly and peaceful protest. In the course of 2012, the authorities have routinely rejected permit requests to demonstrate from opposition groups, and riot police have often used excessive force to disperse protests. While abuse in detention appears to have declined, police routinely beat protestors, in some cases severely, at the time of arrest and during their transfer to police stations. Human Rights Watch has documented serious and systematic due process violations in trials of Bahraini opposition leaders and activists before Bahrain’s civilian as well as special military courts. Violations included denying the right to legal representation and failure to investigate credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment during interrogation.
13. On August 16, Nabeel Rajab, President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, was sentenced to three years imprisonment for calling and participating in peaceful demonstrations without permits between January and March 2012. Rajab was earlier sentenced to three months in prison for tweets that called for the Prime Minister to step down. On August 23, a court of appeal overturned the Twitter conviction but at this point he remains in prison on the “illegal assembly” charge, pending appeal. The courts’ verdicts provided no indication that Rajab had called for or participated in violence.
14. The Bahraini authorities have largely failed in respect of accountability. Although the BICI noted that abuses “could not have happened without the knowledge of higher echelons of the command structure” of the security forces, the few prosecutions of security officials for serious rights abuses have included none from the senior ranks. In effect, most members of the Bahraini security forces who carried out abuses have so far suffered no detriment for doing so. The FCO has failed to press this issue with sufficient vigour with the Bahraini authorities.
UK Policy Towards UAE and Oman
15. The FCO and the UK government as a whole has said little, and even less publicly, about human rights abuses in other Gulf states like UAE and Oman. The FCO talks of “ambitious plans to expand our existing cooperation with the Gulf states across the Board: in culture, defence and security, trade and investment, and foreign policy cooperation”. They go on to say, “we aim to re-energise the relationship, focusing on culture, business and defence relations”. In his recent trip to the Gulf, Prime Minister David Cameron also placed very heavy emphasis on UK defence sales to the countries of the region. Human rights are conspicuously absent from this list of FCO and UK government priorities, although human rights concerns are growing in both UAE and Oman.
16. The human rights situation has deteriorated significantly in UAE over the last 12 months, with an intensified government effort to silence critics of the ruling elite. 63 dissidents with ties to a non-violent Islamist group have been detained without charge in 2012, and human rights defenders, lawyers and political activists have been subject to harassment, intimidation and deportation. The whereabouts of 61 of the detainees, who include human rights lawyers, law professors, judges and student leaders, remains unknown and there are concerns about ill-treatment. Human Rights Watch has publicised credible allegations of torture at state security facilities. The UAE also continues to resist reform of a wholly inadequate legal and regulatory framework governing the country’s migrant workers, who make up 80% of the population and who are subject to ongoing abuses. In addition, the UAE has produced a new federal decree on cyber crime. Passed on November 13, the law criminalizes a wide range of non-violent political activities carried out on or via the internet, from criticism of its rulers to organising unlicensed demonstrations. To their credit, the European Parliament recently passed its first ever resolution on the UAE, expressing profound concerns about the country’s human rights record. It is important that the European Union as a whole should provide a strong and common position on rights abuses in UAE, and the FCO should back this.
17. There are serious human rights concerns in Oman, which the FCO seems most reluctant to address or to criticise. Omani authorities have made unprecedented use of criminal defamation laws to circumscribe freedom of expression, sentencing over 30 pro-reform activists to between a year and 18 months imprisonment and substantial fines on the charge of “defaming the Sultan”. The UK provides significant economic and military assistance to the Sultanate and maintains a sizeable military presence there, which may account for their reluctance to push harder on human rights concerns.
Recommendations
The FCO should make human rights concerns a significantly higher priority than at present in its bilateral relations with all the countries of the Gulf and not subordinate these concerns to trade and security issues.
It should take a strong and consistent position on rights abuses in these countries in dedicated forums like the UN Human Rights Council. It should press all of these countries to allow regular and unfettered access to UN special mechanisms (rapporteurs, for example) and international human rights organisations.
It should press the Gulf states to accede to and comply with key international human rights agreements in particular the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture, and the Optional Protocol to the latter.
The FCO should make a particular effort to highlight the persecution and harassment of human rights defenders in Gulf states.
Trade and investment agreements with the countries of the region should be consistent with the UK’s international human rights obligations, including a requirement on UK companies investing there to undertake appropriate due diligence, so as not to be complicit in rights abuses.
UK military or police training for the security or police forces of the Gulf states should be approached with great caution. Where it occurs, it should comply fully with international human rights standards. UK assistance should not be provided to forces known to engage in rights abuses.
The UK should support efforts to arrest and prosecute, including in the UK, officials from Gulf states against whom there is evidence of involvement in serious human rights abuses like torture.
The FCO should also ensure that the UK government does not permit the export of military equipment to the Gulf that might be used for repression or the abuse of human rights.
19 November 2012