The United Nations human rights experts said on Monday that Saudi Arabia is using its counterterrorism laws in order to silence the activists in a violation of international law which guarantees freedom of speech.
According to Al-Jazeera news reports, the UN panel has entitled the event as “Saudi Arabia – Time for Accountability”, which took place on the sidelines of the UN human rights council on Monday in Geneva.
Fionnuala Ni Aolain, UN special rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering “terrorism”, said the counterterrorism laws with other regulations are “unacceptably wide and unacceptably vague”.
Ni Aolain said, “These laws are used to directly attack and limit the rights of prominent human rights defenders, religious figures, writers, journalists, academics, civil activists and all of these groups have been targeted by this law.”
He said he had been in touch with Saudi Arabia since the past year since its “crackdown”. He said, “Worrisome for me is the targeting of women human rights defenders. All arrests involved incommunicado detention at undisclosed locations.”
Last Friday, Saudi envoy to the UN in Geneva, Abdulaziz MO Alwasil stolf the human rights council: “The kingdom heeds in its measures all international and national standards related to human rights.”
At the panel, Saudi along with campaigners called on the country to release human right defenders, which had been unjustly held in Riyadh.
Zaynab al-Khawaja of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights said, “Some are leaders of famous campaigns like the right to drive and abolishing male guardianship. These attacks are designed to mute their voices and dismantle the movements in the country.”
Issuing her group’s report on alleged torture in Saudi Arabia, she said: “We highlight some of the torture methods that are being used in Saudi Arabia – electrocution, flogging, sometimes whipping, on the thighs, for example, sexual assault where some women human rights defenders have been stripped, have been groped, have been photographed naked, some while handcuffed, and others while blindfolded.”