The Bush Administration's decision to sell $20 billion worth of sophisticated military hardware to the Saudi and other royal families of the Gulf States is ill advised and runs counter to the Administration's earlier encouraging calls for democratic reforms in the region, especially in Saudi Arabia, where citizens are excluded from the political and economic decision making, women have no rights, expatriates are exploited and abused, and American soldiers who are assigned to protect the ruling families are prohibited from practicing their religion in public because other faiths are considered so inferior that their open expression would somehow pollute the country. Instead of selling sophisticated arms to the Saudi royal family, the Bush Administration, the US Congress, and their European counterparts should be pressuring the Saudi dynasty to share power with its disenfranchised people, stop its suicide bombers from going to kill Americans and innocent Iraqis, abolish its age ncies devoted to promoting and enforcing religious extremism, and ban all fatwas that justify the killing of Christian and Jewish "infidels." In addition, if movements opposed to the royal family succeed in toppling the monarchy, they will inherit the sophisticated military hardware and may turn around and use them against the sellers, or give them to other governments or groups to inflict destruction abroad.

Appeasing and protecting the autocratic Saudi ruling dynasty and other tyrannical regimes in the Arab world will not bring peace, stability, or an end to extremism and terrorism. As President Bush himself declared during a November 2003 visit to England: "we must shake off decades of failed policy in the Middle East. Your nation and mine, in the past, have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. Longstanding ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites. Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time, while problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold" (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031119-1.html).

Anyone familiar with the situation of the Saudi royal family would know that the monarchy will not engage in a war against any of its Arab and Muslim neighbors because that would only lead to its demise. The Royal family leaves the burden of its safety and longevity in the hands of its trusted Western allies. They defended the Saudi dynasty against the Egyptians in the early 1960s, against the Mecca uprising in 1979, and against Saddam Hussein in 1991. However, the royal family has a back up defense plan. It is reported that a contingent of Pakistani elite forces are kept ready in case the Saudi royal family is in danger. In addition, some Saudi observers believe the Saudi monarchy has made defense arrangements with the Moroccan, Egyptian, Tunisian (domestic security) and Jordanian regimes in case they are needed to protect their bankroller.

The royal family does not trust the Saudi military to defend it. Its pilots took off in their planes and joined the Egyptian and Yemeni forces in the Saudi-Yemeni-Egyptian conflict in the early 1960s. It is also reported that the senior princes do not trust their own offspring because they are afraid the younger princes might either revolt against them or start fighting each other because of hushed family jealousy and feuds. So why buy expensive and sophisticate military hardware? To oppress the Saudi people, keep Western companies afloat, and buy protection from its loyal clients.

Most of Them are Already Maids

Director’s Comment: The Saudi Ministry of Social affairs is considering whether to allow millions of poverty stricken Saudi women to work as maids. This news should prompt us to ask the following question: will working as maids improve the status of impoverished Saudi women? The overwhelming majority of Saudi women are playing that role now. The Saudi male elite have denied women basic human rights because of their fear of losing total control over their women's sexuality, and this has deprived Saudi society of the valuable contributions to communal life that could have been made by one half of its population. Furthermore, the millions of Asian and African maids currently working in Saudi homes are sexually and physically abused, have no rights, are incarcerated, and have nowhere to turn to seek and receive justice, especially if they are non-Muslims. Saudi women are already sexually harassed by politically oppressed and frustrated men wherever they go, and those unfortunate enough to become p aid maids under the current system will only add the indignities suffered by foreign maids to their already difficult situation.
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Saudi System of Gross Injustice

Director’s Comment: The inhumane saga of Mansour Al-Timani, his wife Fatima and their one and three year old children continue in the hands of Saudi authorities. On July 25, 2005, Fatima and Mansour were forcibly divorced after the Saudi judicial system, acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner, nullified their marriage. Fatima's brothers pushed for the nullification because in their eyes her husband lacked the proper tribal background. When Fatima refused to go back to her brothers' home after the nullification, she and her one year old son were sent to prison. Mansour takes care of their three year old daughter, but never seems to escape harassment at the hands of ruthless Saudi authorities. He was recently stopped by Saudi police, interrogated all night with his traumatized three years old daughter by his side, and was forced to sign a gag order prohibiting him from speaking t o the press about the barbaric and gross injustice committed against him and his family. Fatima has been removed from her prison cell and placed in a substandard unwanted women's shelter.

The Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia calls on the White House, the State Department, Congress, NGOs and the media to intervene on behalf of the Al-Timani family and condemn an arbitrary and whimsical judicial system that penalizes and tortures people who fall in love, get married, have children, and live in accordance with decent social, cultural and religious norms. It's ironic that the government of the United States is in the process of selling sophisticated military hardware to a Saudi government whose arbitrary and erratic judicial system is in the business of destroying the families of law abiding citizens.
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Religious Police, No Need for Proof

Director’s Comment: The Saudi Judicial system indirectly endorses the government’s paid voracious religious police to arrest, interrogate and in some cases kill innocent Saudi citizens and escape any responsibility for their crimes. Several members of the religious police were recently questioned in a religious court regarding their purported improprieties. However, they were neither questioned about their actions, nor were any witnesses called, and they were ultimately set free, to the horror of relatives of the victims they were accused of killing. CDHR published a special newsletter on June 22, 2007 to show the ubiquity and heavy-handedness of the tactics employed by religious police against people who commit no crimes. This Saudi government’s policy is designed to ensure its control over the population using the pretext of religious purification as a moral standard. In reality , the religious police are anything but religious, in the true sense. They are group of violent people whose job is to terrorize the population and keep them in constant fear.
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