Compare and Contrast
Channel News Asia – Asia dominated a US blacklist of alleged top religious freedom violators including China, North Korea, Myanmar and Vietnam, classified as “countries of particular concern” in the State Department’s annual report on international religious freedom.
Whilst Wapo headline “U.S. Says Saudis Repress Religion.” Wapo report continues after the jump.
By Glenn Kessler and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 16, 2004; Page A01
The United States for the first time named Saudi Arabia yesterday as a country that severely violates religious freedom, potentially subjecting the close U.S. ally to sanctions.
“Freedom of religion does not exist” in Saudi Arabia, the State Department said in its annual report on international religious freedom. “Freedom of religion is not recognized or protected under the country’s laws and basic religious freedoms are denied to all but those who adhere to the state-sanctioned version of Sunni Islam,” the report said, adding that “non-Muslim worshippers risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation and sometimes torture.”
The United States also identified seven other nations as “countries of particular concern”: Burma, China, Iran, North Korea and Sudan, which were on the State Department’s list of concern last year, and Eritrea and Vietnam, which were added this year. Iraq was dropped.
Admonishing Saudi Arabia was a switch for the administration, which had resisted calls from human rights groups and key lawmakers that the State Department cite the desert kingdom, a key oil supplier and partner in the war against terrorism, in its annual report. U.S. officials have said they preferred to handle such concerns privately even as they acknowledged that for all practical purposes Saudi Arabia has one of the world’s most repressive regimes.
The designation of Saudi Arabia was made as the Bush administration has come under sharp attack from Democrats — and the hit movie “Fahrenheit 9/11″ — for its close relationship with Saudi rulers.
Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry took the unusual step of singling out the Saudi royal family during his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, saying, “I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation — not the Saudi royal family.”
Last night, a senior adviser to the campaign, Susan Rice, said Kerry supported yesterday’s decision, but she accused the administration of taking a “kid glove” approach to Saudi Arabia. “President Bush’s record makes clear: The only time he will acknowledge unacceptable Saudi behavior is within weeks of an election,” she said.
But administration officials denied that the long-debated action was taken for political considerations.
“Never one word of that has been spoken to me by anybody,” said John V. Hanford III, ambassador at large for international religious freedom. “We are not trying to counter allegations that have no basis in fact.”
Hanford said that in the past year the State Department has tried to prod the Saudi government to make changes in how it deals with religious freedom, and that there had been encouraging signs that the leadership had promoted tolerance and moderation and was seeking to remove inflammatory statements from textbooks. But he said the Saudi actions were not enough to “put them back over the threshold.”
Much of the discrimination in Saudi Arabia, Hanford said, was directly at other Muslims who do not practice Wahhabi, the state-sanctioned religion, in particular Shiites. “Most branches of Islam do not have freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia,” he said.
The Saudi Embassy declined to comment on the administration’s action.
U.S. officials yesterday declined to say what, if any, sanctions might be contemplated against Saudi Arabia if it does not improve religious freedom. “I’m not going to start speculating at this point on what might happen next,” State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher told reporters. “We will be following along, considering the appropriate measures as required.”
Alexandra Arriaga, director of government relations for Amnesty International USA, said the designation should have been made “quite some time ago” but what is needed now is concentrated follow-up by the U.S. government. Bush “ought to raise this issue more forcefully,” Arriaga said, such as setting benchmarks for the Saudi government, including lifting restrictions on religious minorities in Saudi law.
Lawmakers who had pressed this issue in the past hailed yesterday’s announcement.
“Finally, finally, finally,” said Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.). “I just commend the Bush administration for saying what everyone knew.”
Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), co-chairman with Wolf of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, said the action reflects “a sea change” in the view of Saudi Arabia by Congress, the executive branch and the public since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“For too many years, Saudi Arabia was above criticism. You could criticize everybody in this town, but you could not criticize the Saudis,” Lantos said. “Coming face to face with the reality, not only that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis but that, directly or indirectly, Saudi Arabia or its citizens were a principal financier of terrorism — that has now liberated even the State Department to call a spade a spade.”
The International Religious Freedom Act, the 1998 legislation that requires the State Department to issue its annual report, also created a permanent, nine-member U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The commission’s chairwoman, Preeta D. Bansal, called on the State Department to “follow up its designations with action,” beginning with negotiations and ratcheting up, if necessary, to include a broad range of economic and diplomatic sanctions.
Although the commission is “not at this particular time recommending any particular form of sanctions,” she said, if “dialogue and consultations” fail to bring improvements in Saudi Arabia’s record on religion, then “the full range of options needs to be explored, possibly in an escalating way.”
The commission had recommended for two years that Vietnam be named a country of particular concern. Wolf said Vietnam had avoided censure because of its rapidly growing trade with the United States, and despite evidence of egregious violations of religious liberty.
In particular, he cited the case of the Rev. Thaddeus Nguyen Van Ly, a Roman Catholic priest who was branded a traitor and imprisoned in 2001 after he sent testimony to the commission about what he called “extremely cruel” treatment of religious people by the communist government.
Eritrea, the other nation new to the list this year, was cited because all religious activity outside four recognized groups was forced to end and more than 200 Christians remain in prison for their faith.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
so any editing of story / presentation welcome G_72
http://scoop.agonist.org/story/2004/9/15/161951/734
I’ll just put it in section only and make a comment linking to it on my thread.
Saudis Say Politics, Not Religion, Behind U.S. Move
Thu Sep 16, 2004 10:30 AM ET
By Dominic Evans
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) – Prominent Saudis dismissed U.S. accusations of severe violations of religious freedom in the kingdom and said on Thursday that the criticisms were politically motivated.
Government officials were not immediately available over the Muslim weekend to respond to Washington’s decision to put Saudi Arabia on a blacklist of countries of “particular concern” in an annual report on Wednesday tracking religious freedom worldwide.
But the move was met with skepticism by many in the kingdom, whose close alliance with the United States has come under increasing strain in the last three years and become an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. “I can’t say Saudi Arabia is the freest country. But it is the cradle of Islam. Are they proposing to have churches or synagogues or Buddhist temples here?” said Abdulaziz al-Fayez, a member of Saudi Arabia’s consultative Shura Council.
“All Saudis are Muslims and this is a Muslim state.”
Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest sites, is also the birthplace of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. cities that killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001.
Critics say the country’s strict Wahhabi brand of Islam has fostered anti-U.S. militancy. Wednesday’s report said religious freedoms were denied to all Saudis except those who adhere to the “state-sanctioned version of Sunni Islam.”
The State Department report found — as in previous years — that “freedom of religion does not exist” in Saudi Arabia, but included it for the first time on a blacklist alongside Vietnam, Eritrea, Burma, China, Cuba, Iran and North Korea.
POLITICAL REPORT
Some Saudis pointed skeptically to the timing of the report, ahead of U.S. presidential elections. Democrats accuse President Bush of ignoring Saudi Arabia’s rights record until now for fear of causing any backlash from the world’s biggest oil supplier that could affect the U.S. economy.
“Saudi Arabia is becoming an election issue. In the Cold War you would hear about the Soviet Union and China. Now, after 9/11, it’s Saudi Arabia,” said Khalid Dakhil, professor of political sociology at Riyadh’s King Saud University.
“It’s an extremely political report,” said analyst Hussein Shubokshi. “It’s just convenient for Saudi Arabia to be a scapegoat and put pressure on Saudi Arabia and the region.”
Wednesday’s surprise designation allowed for a range of sanctions on Saudi Arabia, but there was no expectation that any would be applied.
Saudi Arabia’s minority Shi’ite Muslims have long complained of second-class treatment in the Sunni-dominated country. Human rights groups also say many of the 6 million expatriate workers are prevented from practicing their religion.
But Fayez said Muslim preachers in the United States were being harassed “under the cover of anti-terrorism measures.”
“This is not the ideal state,” he said. “But those who come here understand it is a Muslim country. In the privacy of their homes, no one checks what they do.”
Dakhil said U.S. criticism of Saudi Arabia and its strong support of Israel showed double standards at work.
“Is it all right for Israel to say their state must be a Jewish state — and then criticize a Muslim state for being Muslim? That’s hypocrisy.”
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=6255999
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FI21Ak01.html
Saudis fall further from US grace
By Ashish Kumar Sen
WASHINGTON – On a September morning just over three years ago, as hijackers piloted airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, few would have guessed the catastrophic consequences for Saudi Arabia.
Washington’s “special relationship” with Riyadh has steadily unraveled since the revelation that 15 of the 19 hijackers were young Saudis.
Last week, the predominantly Sunni Muslim kingdom was placed on the US State Department’s list of “countries of particular concern” for its lack of religious freedom, putting it in the company of North Korea, Iran and Sudan.
In his State of the Union address in 2002, US President George W Bush included both Iran and North Korea on a three-nation “axis of evil”. The third country was Iraq.
In a stinging indictment of Washington’s ally, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom John Hanford said that in Saudi Arabia “the government rigidly mandates religious conformity. Non-Wahhabi, Sunni, Sunni Muslims, as well as Shi’ite and Sufi Muslims, face discrimination and sometimes severe restrictions on the practice of their faith.”
The Bush administration, Danforth said, is concerned about the religious hate speeches that occur in some mosques, where Muslims, who are not of the Salafi faith, as well as other religions, “can be in for some pretty severe language”.
“We’re concerned about the export of religious extremism and intolerance to other countries where religious freedom for Muslims is respected,” he said. “There were frequent instances in which mosque preachers, whose salaries are paid for by the government, used violent language against non-Sunni Muslims and other religions in their sermons.”
Riyadh’s inclusion on a list of “countries of particular concern” is just the latest setback in US-Saudi relations. US imports of Saudi oil have declined from levels in 2002. “What we’re seeing is not punishment or retribution, but a realization that the special relationship is not so special any more,” James Placke, a senior associate at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said at a panel discussion in Washington last week.
He predicts that by the end of the year, Saudi Arabia will no longer be among the top five exporters of oil to the US.
In his book Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, Robert Baer, a former Central Intelligence Agency operative, makes the case that America’s dependence on Saudi oil has made it increasingly vulnerable to economic disaster and put it at risk for further acts of terrorism.
“Saudi Arabia is more and more an irrational state, a place that spawns global terrorism even as it succumbs to an ancient and deeply seated isolationism, a kingdom led by a royal family that can’t get out of the way of its own greed. Is this the fulcrum we want the global economy to balance on?” Baer asks.
For decades, the US has counted on the Saudis for cheap oil and lucrative business relationships, while providing in exchange a reliable market for the kingdom’s vast oil reserves.
“Of the Islamic oil states, none is more critical than Saudi Arabia, because (a) it sits on top of the largest proven reserves; (b) it serves as the market regulator for the entire global petroleum industry; and (c) it has the money, the political will, and the religious zeal to pursue control of the Arab Peninsula and Central Asia,” writes Baer. “Like it or not, the US and Saudi Arabia are joined at the hip. Its future is our future.
“Washington’s answer for Saudi Arabia – apart from the mantra that nothing’s wrong – is the same as its answer for the rest of the Middle East: democracy will cure everything,” Baer writes.
It is with this in mind that Washington is keeping a close eye on the kingdom’s first elections. Municipal elections will be held in November to fill half the seats on 178 municipal councils. The royal family will appoint the other half.
These elections are being seen as a first tentative step toward political reform in the kingdom – an absolute monarchy – that has never had elections since its creation in 1932.
Facing Islamic militants at home and increasing Western pressure for political reform, Saudi Arabia has few options left on the table.
“Give us the opportunity to do things at our own pace. We will change whatever we think is necessary for us to change,” Osama bin Mohammed al-Kurdi, a member of Saudi Arabia’s majlis al-Shura (consultative council) that advises the royal family, said at the panel discussion on the pace of reform in the kingdom. “We don’t think we have to follow a certain model [of democracy] for it to be acceptable to others.”
In an oblique criticism of Bush’s Greater Middle East Initiative, al-Kurdi said: “It is not for others to come in and decide to do mass reforms for the Middle East. Somehow I don’t think mass reforms will work.” One of the most important things about reform is that “it has to come from the people”, he added.
Pointing out that the unified kingdom is barely 70 years old, al-Kurdi said: “We still have a lot of things to do. I think one step at a time is the best way to go about it.” Rather than internal security and democracy, he said Saudi Arabia was looking at “internal security and reform”. “Let us learn from the experience of others. For God’s sake, the last thing we need now is skepticism,” he added.
F Gregory Gause III, associate professor of political science at the University of Vermont, said a move toward national elections in Saudi Arabia would be “counterproductive from the point of view of both reform and stability”. The most important thing the Saudis have to do is improve their internal-security situation, Gause said. “You can’t have anything approaching democracy if you don’t have internal security. The one is a prerequisite of the other. If you don’t have security you will not have people voting. You will not have people practicing politics.”
Thomas Lippman, adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, said it is also crucial that Crown Prince Abdullah settle the succession issue and “let the Saudi people know that someone whom they trust, admire, respect and are willing to follow is waiting in line” to lead.
Pointing out that succession is one issue on which Saudis are least open to foreigners meddling, Gause said the primary task of the ruling family, if it is going to maintain itself, is to sustain an orderly succession that ensures order in the country. Saudis face “troubled waters”, Gause said. Since King Abd-al-Aziz died, succession has gone through his sons. “At some point it will be inevitable that there will be no more of the king’s sons. And there is no template or precedent of how succession goes to the generation of grandsons.”
Before the generation of sons disappears, Gause said, “it is incumbent upon them to have a procedure in line so that the generational transition is shown”.
For now, Saudi Arabia is preparing for its tryst with democracy, which is by no means an inclusive one. Women will not be permitted to vote in the municipal elections. “From the mufti of Saudi Arabia to the most radical al-Qaeda type, the one issue that would unite them would be women’s issues – there are too many obstacles,” Gause said. “If there is one issue that would mobilize guys with long beards to come out and vote for people who would stand against the general reform agenda in Saudi Arabia, it would be women’s issues.”
Lippman agreed that Crown Prince Abdullah needed to be “particularly cautious about women’s issues because nothing else would more quickly alienate the religious leaders whose support he needs.”
Al-Kurdi said: “Are [women] going to vote in the future? I think they will. When? I don’t know.”
A US-style election would lead to an extremist government in Saudi Arabia, cautioned Placke, a former deputy assistant secretary of state.
Lippman, meanwhile, said that while he understood Americans’ impatience with the slow pace of reform in Saudi Arabia, “it is useful to keep in mind that the unified kingdom is 73 years old. Where were we 73 years after the adoption of our constitution? We were preparing to fight a Civil War over slavery that had sustained the economy. We were busy wiping out our indigenous population, and women couldn’t vote.
“It is useful for Americans to evaluate the progress of reform in Saudi Arabia in the context of the way real societies work,” Lippman added, “not the way we’d like them to work.”
Ashish Kumar Sen is a Washington, DC-based journalist.
headline story today’s Arabnews.com
US Under Fire for Double Standard on Religious Freedom
P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab News
JEDDAH, 20 September 2004 — A prominent Saudi scholar yesterday blasted the United States for its accusation that Saudi Arabia violated religious freedom, saying Washington has “no right to ….
read on, it’s partly the old Palestine switcheroo…@
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=51726&d=20&m=9&y=2004