On June 23, 2022, Saudi Arabia arrested social media activist Musa Ali Al-Khunaizi, after he was summoned for investigation by the Public Prosecution.
The Saudi government has not officially announced the reason for the arrest of 23-year-old Musa al-Khunaizi. However, a few days before his arrest, the Saudi Electronic Army launched a campaign of incitement to arrest him for inciting sectarian strife, as they put it. There's a video clip circulating on social media where Musa Al-Khunaizi stated that the Shiites were persecuted and insulted on the Friday pulpits on a TikTok Live with a woman.
Al-Khunaizi is a famous figure in Saudi Arabia, and a media company has been seeking for more than a year to produce a drama series based on his life story. The story goes back to 2020 when a woman named Maryam was trying to obtain an identity card for a young man claiming to be her son (Musa) without having the official papers proving his birth and lineage. The case raised the employee's suspicions, which prompted him to inform the security authorities. After investigation and medical examinations, it turned out that she had kidnapped him from the hospital when he was born from his biological mother by disguising herself as a nurse. With further investigations, it turned out that Maryam - who was then known as the kidnapper of Dammam - had also kidnapped two children about twenty years ago, and they live with her as if they were her children, in addition to Musa.
This dramatic story gained Musa Al-Khunaizi quick fame after he returned to his real family, 21 years after his kidnapping. Although he was living in the city of Dammam, which is about 20 kilometres from the Qatif Governorate, where his real family resides, he grew up following the Sunni sect, unlike his real family, which belongs to the Shiite sect.
In the same conversation that Moussa had with that woman, he added that he hated the Shiite sect very much because of the culture of hatred promoted in the Friday pulpits.
The official clergy in Saudi Arabia despise the beliefs of the Shiites, and always classify them as enemies of Islam. Saudi Arabia does not allow Shiites and other sects to respond to official clerics or criticize their hate speech. In 2016, Saudi Arabia arrested human rights defender Sheikh Muhammad al-Habib. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison on charges of inciting sectarianism and sedition, due to his demands to stop the blasphemy of the Shiites and contempt for their beliefs. The court added another 5 years to Sheikh Al-Habib’s prison term in a different invitation related to his defence of peaceful demonstrations and the demand for the release of social justice advocate Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr, who was executed by Saudi Arabia on January 2, 2016, in a massacre that included 46 others. Sheikh Al Habib is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence.
In 2009, Saudi Arabia arrested political reform advocate Sheikh Tawfiq Al-Amer, for demanding a constitutional monarchy. The Public Prosecution also charged him with insulting official scholars, because he had objected to a statement that they insulted the Shiites and their beliefs.
Although Saudi Arabia criminalizes hate speech in the draft of the new penal code that has not been approved at the time of writing this report, official Saudi newspapers still insult Shiites from time to time and disdain their beliefs. The Saudi government also continues to classify the Shiites' public rejection of sectarian practices against them as provoking sectarianism and strife and detrimental to national cohesion.
The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights believes that the arrest of Musa Al-Khunaizi is arbitrary, and his statement about the persecution of Shiites falls under freedom of opinion. The organization believes that Saudi Arabia supports the official clergy who despise the Shiites and despise their beliefs, which results in discrimination against them in all fields, and uses the judiciary to criminalize critics and protesters of hate speech and sectarian calls.