Contrary to claims of liberalisation in Saudi Arabia, the authorities are continuing to suppress free speech and freedom of religion. On February 4, the Ministry of Sport dissolved the management board of Al Safa FC, of Safwa City in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, where its Shia population is largely concentrated, over chanting by supporters during a match on January 24.
The European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) and ALQST have received information that 10 members of Al Safa’s supporters’ association were arrested and sent to Qatif General Prison, and more than 150 were called in for questioning. ESOHR and ALQST have seen a list of the names of those arrested, and while they will not be publishing it, they consider the arrests to have been essentially arbitrary in nature, based as they were on the chanting of slogans and similar non-criminal acts.
The ministry said in a statement that this was “with reference to the violations committed in this respect by the supporters’ association of Al Safa FC in contravention of Article 1/8 of the Basic Regulations for Sports Clubs, which require ‘adherence to the laws and regulations in force in the kingdom’”.
In addition, the Discipline and Ethics Committee of the Saudi Football Federation announced a series of penalties against Al Safa, imposing on it a fine of SR200,000 ($53,000) along with a ban on spectators at the team’s next five matches.
From video footage of the match posted on social media, it appears that the crowd were chanting popular religious songs widely known among the Shia community and containing nothing sectarian or offensive.
ESOHR and ALQST note that the mounting repression in Saudi Arabia, from which not even sport and sporting venues are exempt, coincides with government efforts to attract investment and hold major football tournaments. The two human rights NGOs regard treating religious chants and songs as “sectarian forms of expression” as an attack on religious freedom and an arbitrary use of provisions of the law.
The two organisations maintain that all of Saudi Arabia’s official bodies – ministries, agencies and committees, including bodies that are supposed to be concerned only with sport – are now party to the authorities’ violations of freedoms and basic rights; and that this forms part of a policy of intimidation of the Saudi public that has become more and more apparent in recent years.