HRW reports on Saudi Arabia

Human Rights Watch publicou hoxe dous informes sobre violacións dos Direitos Humanos en Arabia Saudí.

O primeiro informe, de 146 páxinas, leva por título “Precarious Justice: Arbitrary Detention and Unfair Trials in the Deficient Criminal Justice System of Saudi Arabia”. Copio un extracto da introducción:

[...] Individuals in Saudi Arabia may find themselves detained and arrested for behavior that is not inherently criminal, or for apparently (and unwittingly) offending vague legal prohibitions. They may then find themselves in solitary confinement and subject to forms of ill-treatment. The authorities often do not inform individuals of the crime of which they are accused, or the evidence supporting the accusation. An accused person typically does not have access to a lawyer, faces abuse when refusing to incriminate him or herself, and waits excessive periods of time before trial, where he or she is often unable to examine witnesses or evidence and present a legal defense, not least because of a presumption of guilt and shifting charges. [...]

Saudi Arabia has not promulgated a penal (criminal) code. Accordingly, citizens, residents, and visitors have no means of knowing with any precision what acts constitute a criminal offense. Previous court rulings do not bind Saudi judges, and there is little evidence to suggest that judges seek to apply consistency in sentencing for similar crimes. Saudi criminal justice imposes the death penalty after patently unfair trials in violation of international law, and imposes corporal punishment in the form of public flogging, which is inherently cruel and degrading. Saudi law and practice are also inherently discriminatory. One Saudi interpretation of Sharia law provides that a Muslim woman’s testimony is not generally accepted in criminal cases and non-Muslim men may testify only in cases of “necessity”. Women cannot represent themselves in court under the Saudi practice of male guardianship over “minors”, a term that includes women of all ages. [...]

O segundo informe, de 82 páxinas, leva por título “Adults Before Their Time: Children in Saudi Arabia’s Criminal Justice System”. Copio un extracto da introducción:

[...] Very few Saudi laws or regulations explicitly address the rights of child offenders, or how their cases are to be handled, leaving law enforcement officials, judges, and prosecutors with broad discretion in determining when to arrest children, how long to detain them, and what punishments to impose on those deemed to have broken the law. Judicial discretion is exacerbated by the lack of law setting an age below which a child should not be tried as an adult. As a result, judges often treat as adults persons who were under age 18 at the time of an alleged crime. Judges can sentence to death, amputation, or flogging children still under 18 as well as those now over 18 but who committed the crime while under age 18. Often such sentences will be imposed following trials where they had no legal counsel and little capacity or opportunity to defend themselves. In addition, authorities often treat foreign children who are victims of trafficking primarily as offenders and they can be arrested, detained, or deported for begging or lack of legal residency. Many children deported in these circumstances are at risk of return to places where they face irreparable harm. [...]