Coinciding with the International Day in Support of the Victims of Torture, Saudi human rights organizations, including, the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, have organised an seminar event entitled “The Reality of torture in Saudi Arabia and the role local and international actors.”
The seminar event will be held in the German capital of Berlin, at the House of Democracy and Human Rights on 29th June 2016. The event will host a panel of expert, specialists and activists.
The seminar will discuss torture in Saudi Arabia, in light of a number of reports confirming the existence of torture, and comes in response to the need for urgent initiatives to end torture.
A member of the UN Committee against Torture, Hani Abd Al-Wahhab, will be amongst the guest panellists at the seminar. The committee recently issued a report containing the latest review of information about compliance by Saudi Arabia to the Convention against Torture, which was released in the wake of an assessment of torture in some States parties to the Convention, as part of a periodic review the second in May 2016.
Zena Aleisa will be moderating the event on behalf European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, and the event will seek to shed light on several aspects of the reality of torture in Saudi Arabia, and the official position of the justice system in Saudi Arabia, in addition to international perspective on torture, and the role of local and international actors to curb this gross violation.
The Saudi lawyer and human rights defender, Taha Al Haji, will be a panellist at the seminar, along with the Secretary-General of the World Organization against Torture Gerald Staberock, and Rene Wildangel from Amnesty International Germany.
During the event, ESOHR will be launching its recent shadow report, which it submitted to the United Nations Committee against Torture. The event will be broadcasted live directly via ESOHR social networking accounts, Facebook and Twitter.