Saudi Arabia Cracks Down on Free Speech

Last week I wrote a piece talking about the social media crackdown that the Turkish government is involved in.  As social media takes a bigger role in allowing citizens of countries to communicate and voice their discontent, the desire to control it is on the rise.  Now, it looks like yet another country is looking to silence unwanted voices on the Internet.  Saudi Arabia is arresting people based on what they post through their Facebook accounts.

The victims are seven individuals who were posting on Facebook and saying that the people should protest against the government and demand the release of tens-of-thousands of political prisoners.  They also happened to be Shia Muslims, a religious group that makes up the minority in the country.  There have been cries of discrimination from the Shia Muslims for years now and Facebook is just the next stage of evolution in the discontent.  The end result was that the seven accused were tried in an anti-terrorism court and given various sentences, from five to ten years in prison.

The government is, naturally, denying all accusations of discrimination on their part and has little to say regarding the arrests.  The government dislike of protestors is well known, however.  They usually tend to use police forces when dealing with demonstrations, a tactic that has resulted in at least twenty deaths over the last couple of years.

The international reaction to Saudi Arabia’s policies has been mostly mute.  Human Rights Watch has stepped forward at least, making their displeasure at these abuses known and asking the EU to officially condemn the arrests.  Whether others will fall in line to wag their finger as the oil-rich Saudi Arabia remains to be seen.

Further, it looks like the government of the country will be taking more steps to silence the voices of their citizens.  A Skype-like site by the name of Viber was recently banned in the country and there are plans to ban several more social media platforms.  While this may help Saudi Arabia to keep its citizens uninformed and helpless against whatever policies the government feels like implementing, it doesn’t help with the country’s reputation in international eyes.  Saudi Arabia now joins the ranks of other Internet-controlling countries such as Turkey, China and North Korea, suppressing their citizens in an effort to maintain an outdated status quo.

Viber logo courtesy of Viber Media Inc. via Wikicommons