Riyadh regime intolerant to any criticism: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Saeed Shehabi, a political analyst in London, to discuss the new rules set out by the Saudi regime which could put to death ordinary people for their comments on social networking websites.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Isn’t it a bit extreme to execute people who put their views and opinions on social media networking sites?

Shehabi: Ali al-Nimr who was 17 when he joined an anti-regime protest; what did he do other than expressing his view that he wanted some reform in the kingdom of silence, of the Saudis, nothing more than that has been used to condemn him to death.

Now, people in Saudi Arabia are simply not allowed to speak anything about what they want in their country. They cannot ask for change of government, they cannot ask for a constitution, they cannot ask for real representative government or monitoring or accountancy of the Saudi officials.

So people who express a view outside the official view are regarded as anti-state, as spreading corruption on earth, and their punishment is death. This is normal in Saudi Arabia, nothing new about that at all, except that it is being codified, it is being legalized and, unfortunately, there are many in the West who are ready to accept that codification.

Press TV: Speaking of this codification, do you think that it shows the weakness of the House of Saud and its position of power in the kingdom that it is afraid of even a simple tweet?

Shehabi: These regimes have no social power, no popular power, no legitimacy like that of Bahrain also. Last week, a man who has just expressed outrage at the Mina incident in Saudi Arabia by the Saudis, himself was arrested and is likely to be condemned to long-term imprisonment.

These regimes of the Saudis, of the Al Khalifa, of other sheikdoms in the [Persian] Gulf, have no popular support. They feel weak. They feel any accusation, any criticism, as amounting to a popular uprising to them. So this is a popular uprising against their dictatorship. So they cannot tolerate any dissent, any criticism from anyone. This is why they control the Ulamas, the scholars, the TV, the newspapers, the media, and they spend lavishly on the media in order to ensure that nobody criticizes them. So now they are only codifying it, making it legal to kill people, to execute people for anti-regime remarks.

Now this is, of course, absolutely rejected and refused and, of course, condemned by the human rights world, but unfortunately as long as they have the support of the West, they can do whatever they want. They are bombing Yemen for what? What did the Yemenis do? Probably some of them said something against the Saudis, but nothing more than that, yet they are condemned for what they are doing by bombing. So unfortunately the Saudis are condemned to death because of this regime, which is [intolerant] to any form of criticism.

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