Death Penalty Haunts Saudi Women Rights Activist: Esraa al-Ghamgam

Saudi Arabia’s totalitarian regime has issued a death sentence against its citizen, the prominent political and human rights activist, Esraa al-Ghamgam, On Monday, 13 of August 2018. The Attorney General has requested the execution of al-Ghamgam, in the first session after months of arrest.

Al-Ghamgam has been in detention since December 2015, with her husband Musa al-Hashem after violently raiding their home and tampering with its contents, without the knowledge of her family.

It is noteworthy to mention that various Saudi courts have convicted dozens of cases against Shiite defendants for protest-related and human rights activism. The Criminal Justice System is utilised as a cudgel to mete out draconian punishments following egregiously unfair trials and based on confessions extracted under prolonged severe torture in solitary confinement.

Al-Ghamgam is reportedly said to be kept in custody in the prison of the General Investigation in Dammam. Undeniably, she is a prisoner of conscience for having exercised her right to free expression. Her only crime in this dictatorial country is her defence of the detainees, her demands for civil rights, her participation in peaceful demonstrations and her expression of views on social media platforms.

Al-Ghamgam is from Dammam city in Qateef, one of the most marginalised and ostracised provinces in the so-called kingdom, where the human rights situation and repression are durable and intolerable. Qateef is an urban Shiite-majority area, located in Eastern Province of the Arabian Peninsula, and has been subjected to a systematic policy of marginalisation and deadly clashes and intensified crackdown, over the past years.

Discrimination against the Shiite minority, who make up 10 to 15 percent of the population and mostly live in Eastern province, in Saudi Arabia inflames sectarian hatred and produces periodic violent episodes.

The hostility and suspicion of the authoritarian Saudi regime toward the Shiites citizens reflect more than just long-standing grave religious intolerance. Besides, Shiite students are forced to be indoctrinated a Wahhabi curriculum that refers to Shiites using derogatory terms and harshly stigmatises their religious beliefs and practices as shirk [polytheism], propounding the idea that such practices are grounds for removal from Islam and will lead its followers “edifices of shirk” to hell.

Shiite citizens do not receive equal treatment and the government impairs their ability to practice their religious rituals and to build mosques. Based on this pervasive discrimination, Shiites are excluded from serving in certain public sector jobs such as high political diplomats or high-ranking military officers.

On May 2017, the Saudi security forces carried out a planned demolition of Awamiya’s historic Musawara neighbourhood. They responded with force with the armless peaceful protestors and the violence escalated further after sealing off the entire town on 26 July.

In accordance to all humanitarian laws, particularly the ICCPR; the deprivation of freedom on the sole ground of peacefully exercising the right of opinion and expression and defending human rights through is considered arbitrary and unlawful and a heinous infringement of fundamental rights.

On 15 October 2014, the Saudi judiciary sentenced the political dissident Sheikh Nemer Baqir al-Nemer to death. Al-Nemer had been executed arbitrarily for demanding equality, defending prisoners of conscience and expressing political views about the Saudi government. These charges constitute a flagrant violation of international standards for fair trials, particularly Article III of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which stipulates that everyone have the right to life, liberty and security.

Activists have warned that the Saudi regime would carry out the death sentence by the sword merely because al-Ghamgam has been long criticising the regime, demanding international organisations and activists’ immediate intervene to halt this arbitrary prosecution, to release her and to drop her arbitrary charges.

Further, Esraa al-Ghamgam’s father has published a help-letter in which he calls to appoint a lawyer for his only daughter, however, no one reacts and his attempts have been in vain. She is at risk of reprisal, inhumane treatment, sexual assaults and beatings by the interrogators.

Saudi Arabia hostile regime, a prime source of establishing and funding terrorist groups, has already beheaded 48 innocent citizens by the beginning of 2018. It has a shameful record of human rights abuses and though is one of the U.S. closest allies and supplied by the very most advanced military hardware to persecute its own people and demolish Yemen.

 Esraa al-Ghamgam is threatened by death for advocating for human rights and talking publicly about the deteriorated human rights violations in Saudi Arabia. It has become clear that advocating for human rights is a punishable crime against human rights defenders, journalists and political opponents, in this extraordinary country.