title: Mercedes-Benz EQS

text: The car has several safety and automated features: adaptive cruise control, lane centering, automatic lane changing, automated emergency braking, avoidance assist (for pedestrians and bicycles), blind spot monitoring including rear seat exit warning, cross-traffic alert, traffic-sign recognition, automatic parking assist, adaptive headlights.


title: Mercedes-Benz EQS

text: The car can optionally be fit with a level 3 autonomous driving feature named "Drive Pilot" allowing the driver to take his hands off the wheel and his eyes off the road in heavy traffic up to a speed on of German motorways. The system is a World first and works by using LiDAR, cameras, microphones and various sensors. It is planned to also become available to other countries. The car is the first that can be fit a level 4 automated valet parking system named "Intelligent Park Pilot".


title: Susannah Cahalan

text: Susannah Cahalan (born January 30, 1985) is an American journalist and author, known for writing the memoir "Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness", about her hospitalization with a rare auto-immune disease, anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. She published a second book, "The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness", in 2019. When she is not writing longer works, she works as a journalist for the "New York Post". Cahalan's work has raised awareness for her brain disease, making it more well-known and decreasing the likelihood of misdiagnoses.


title: Susannah Cahalan

text: As Cahalan was a journalist for the New York Post before she became ill, her editor suggested that she write about her disease and how it impacted her. As she recovered from her brain illness, she decided to bring the same journalistic approach to writing her memoir, using fact and research as the foundation for her story. According to Cahalan, it was a "very dissociative process" to write about her experience with the disease. She had to recreate the time-line of everything that happened, gathering different records from the hospital to keep track of what happened and when. Through interviewing those closest to her, she was able to piece together what that month looked like. Overwhelmingly, what she remembered from her disease was the fear and anger that it created within her. Writing her book, she said, felt like regaining control over the body that had controlled her for so long.


title: Susannah Cahalan

text: Cahalan still writes for the New York Post with articles published frequently. She gave a lecture at the opening session of the American Psychiatric Association's 2017 meeting. She presents talks for hospitals and universities to raise awareness about her disease. She resides in Brooklyn, New York, sharing a home with her husband, twin boys, and dog.


title: Susannah Cahalan

text: Susannah’s disease manifested in 2009 when she was just 24 years old. It began with sensory issues, which she later described in her article, "My Mysterious Lost Month of Madness" as experiencing the world “brighter, louder, more painful.” She also began experiencing numbness in the whole left side of her body, and paranoid hallucinations of bed bug bites. Concerned by the numbness, Cahalan sought out a neurologist who ran multiple inconclusive tests including two normal MRIs. Susannah began experiencing severe insomnia and continued behavioral abnormalities. One night at her boyfriend’s apartment, she had a grand mal seizure and woke up in St. Luke’s Hospital. Cahalan describes the hospital neurologist as dismissive, and she received her first of multiple misdiagnoses: alcohol withdrawal. Psychiatrists also misdiagnosed her with schizophrenia and bipolar I disorder. Cahalan was released from the hospital and as her disease worsened, she had another grand mal seizure.


title: Susannah Cahalan

text: After her second seizure, Cahalan’s parents took her to the hospital for an EEG and demanded that she not be taken to a psychiatric floor. Unlike many anti-NMDA cases, Cahalan was never admitted to a psychiatric ward. While at the hospital, Susannah had her third seizure and was immediately placed on the epilepsy floor of New York University’s Medical Center. Susannah’s hallucinations and delusions soared during the month she spent in the hospital. Susannah had two lumbar puncture procedures that revealed high white blood cell counts. Because high white blood cells count signify brain swelling, the case was officially passed to neuro-pathologist and epileptologist, Dr. Souhel Najjar at NYU medical center.


title: Susannah Cahalan

text: Dr. Najjar had Cahalan perform a “clock test," which involves the patient drawing the face of a clock. When Cahalan drew her clock, she was only able to recreate half of it, indicating injury to one side of her brain. After a brain biopsy, it was concluded that Cahalan's issue was not psychiatric, but the result of anti-NMDA encephalitis, a brain-inflammation disease with an unknown cause. She was only the 217th person diagnosed with this illness.


title: Susannah Cahalan

text: In order to treat her disease, she was given an assortment of different steroids, infusions, and plasmapheresis. She made a full recovery without suffering long-term brain damage.


title: Susannah Cahalan

text: Netflix released a feature film based on Susannah Cahalan’s memoir, "Brain on Fire". The movie, which shares the title of the book, was directed by Irish filmmaker, Gerard Barrett. Chloe Grace Moretz portrays Cahalan in the film, which chronicles the events leading to Cahalan’s misdiagnosis, hospitalization, and eventual diagnosis and recovery.


title: Susannah Cahalan

text: In 2019, Cahalan's second book was published, "The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness". In the work she accuses psychologist David Rosenhan of fabricating the results of seminal research published in the journal "Science". Rosenhan's work demonstrated that staff working at psychiatric hospitals, including psychiatrists, could be easily misled to diagnose schizophrenia when individuals were perfectly sane and reported the mistreatment of patients in these facilities. Cahalan was drawn to this study due to her own experiences with being improperly diagnosed with mental illness, but as she researched Rosenhan and his activity, she began to find contradictions in his work that made her question the validity of his experiment.


title: Susannah Cahalan

text: Cahalan has been awarded the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism from Yale University,  the Richardson Seminar in the History of Psychiatry from Cornell in 2020, and the Spitzer Memorial lecture from Columbia University in 2020.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: Jazeera Airways K.S.C () is a Kuwaiti airline with its head office on the grounds of Kuwait International Airport in Al Farwaniyah Governorate, Kuwait. It operates scheduled services in the Middle East, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Europe. Its main base is Kuwait International Airport. The airline has grown since its launch to become Kuwait's second national airline.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: Jazeera Airways is one of the largest operators at Kuwait airport, having handled a quarter of all aircraft movements and passengers at the airport during July 2009.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: According to the July 2009 report issued by Kuwait Directorate General for Civil Aviation's, Jazeera Airways had the largest number of aircraft movement in the month with 1834 take-offs and landings, overpassing the second-largest carrier in aircraft movement by 4% .


title: Jazeera Airways

text: In 2004 the Kuwait Government permitted the establishment of the non-governmental airline firm, essentially ending Kuwait's 50-year-old dependency on Kuwait Airways. The 2004 Emiree Decree #89 established Jazeera Airways as the first airline to enter this newly liberalized industry.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: Jazeera Airways raised its capital of KD 10 million (US$35 million) through an initial public offering in Kuwait that was oversubscribed 12 times. The capital was doubled to KD 20 million (US$70 million) in 4Q 2007 by a second offering to existing shareholders. In May 2009, a share distribution of 10% effectively increased the capital to KD 22 million (US$77 million).


title: Jazeera Airways

text: About 26% of the airline is owned by two companies affiliated with the Boodai Group: Wings Finance (9%) and Boodai Projects (17%). 6-7% is also held by Jasem M. al-Mousa Trading, a company owned by a former Minister of Public Works in the first Kuwaiti government established after the end of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. About 17.5% is held by two real estate companies, and the rest is publicly held.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: Jazeera Airways started operations on 30 October 2005 with a fleet of brand new Airbus A320 aircraft, all leather seats, flying to several destinations in the Middle East.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: In Q2 2009, UAE authorities requested the airline to terminate its hub operations in Dubai. This step was seen as a support to Dubai's upcoming launch of its own low-cost airline, FlyDubai. Jazeera changed its operation model by concentrating on its Kuwait hub and trying to launch a second hub somewhere else. By Q2 2010, the new model proved unprofitable as the Kuwait hub suffered from overcapacity. The airline changed its plans by cancelling many stations and parking some aircraft which were later returned to lessor.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: Jazeera Airways flies to destinations across the Middle East and Europe from its base in Kuwait. Since 2018, the company has expanded its available routes.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: In October 2019, Jazeera Airways launched its first flight to London, bringing the first new service from Kuwait to the UK in 55 years. It operates the flight to London Gatwick Airport's South Terminal with its newest A320neo aircraft.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: In 2018, Jazeera Airways opened its own dedicated terminal at Kuwait International Airport. The facility is claimed to be the first owned, built and operated by a private airline in the Middle East. It features a dedicated check-in hall for Jazeera passengers, a business class lounge, direct access to Jazeera boarding gates, and a car park with 350 spaces connected by a sky bridge.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: The airline's fleet is powered by CFM56-5B engines. All Jazeera Airways aircraft are fitted with 165 leather seats, and split into two cabins: Jazeera and Jazeera Business. When Jazeera business is offered, six seats are removed to provide 12 Plus seats in addition to 147 Economy seats.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: Jazeera Airways ordered 30 Airbus A320s on 18 June 2007. This was announced at the Paris Air Show bringing its total orders up to 35 Airbus A320s.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: During 2010, due to the airline's change of operation plans, several aircraft were parked, and eventually, five were returned to lessor Sahaab which subsequently leased them to Virgin America and SriLankan Airlines.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: In April 2011, Jazeera Airways canceled 25 of the 40 A320s it ordered in 2007. Jazeera took delivery of four A320s still on order from 2012 to 2014.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: In 2018, Jazeera Airways took deliveriy of the first Airbus A320neo aircraft in the Middle East and employed it on their Dubai route.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: In September 2019 Jazeera also planned to order the A321LR. They also started their longest A320 family route which is 6 hours from its hub in Kuwait to London Gatwick


title: Jazeera Airways

text: The airline offers business and economy class seating. The economy class seating has leather seats and shareable TV screens. Business-class seats have leather seats and personal TV screens and two seats per row.


title: Jazeera Airways

text: On 2 August 2018, Jazeera flight (J9 608) from Kuwait caught fire in its right engine on landing at Hyderabad. All 145 passengers were evacuated safely and the fire was extinguished.


title: Brown Derby

text: Brown Derby was a chain of restaurants in Los Angeles, California. The first and best known was shaped like a derby hat, an iconic image that became synonymous with the Golden Age of Hollywood. It was opened by Wilson Mizner in 1926. The chain was started by Robert H. Cobb and Herbert K. Somborn (a former husband of film star Gloria Swanson) in the 1920s. The original Brown Derby restaurants had closed or had been converted to other uses by the 1980s, though a Disney-backed Brown Derby national franchising program revived the brand in the 21st century. It is often incorrectly thought that the Brown Derby was a single restaurant, and the Wilshire Boulevard and Hollywood branches are frequently confused.


title: Brown Derby

text: There is a non-related chain of steakhouse restaurants founded in 1941 in Akron, Ohio, and franchised in 1962. This chain was founded by Ted and Gus Girves, and the full name of these restaurants is "Girves Brown Derby". , five of the Girves chain are still in business.


title: Brown Derby

text: The first restaurant was opened in February 1926 at 3427 Wilshire Boulevard in a building built in the distinctive shape of a derby hat. Whimsical architecture was in vogue at the time, and the restaurant was designed to catch the eye of passing motorists. The Brown Derby name originated from a Malverne, New York-based restaurant of the same name that had been a hang-out for vaudevillians in the 1920s. It was founded by Wilson Mizner as a small cafe, across the street from the Hollywood hot spot the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel. Wilson was the front man; Herbert K. Somborn owned the property and Jack L. Warner put up the money. Wilson Mizner sat in booth 50 almost every day. Unfortunately the original restaurant was small and suffered from acoustic problems in which sound from one end of the building bounced off the semicircular ceiling and traveled to the other side of the room.


title: Brown Derby

text: Most of the rest of the block bounded by Wilshire Boulevard, Sixth Street, Mariposa Avenue and Alexandria Avenue was occupied by the Chapman Park Hotel and Bungalows which wanted to acquire the rest of the block that it did not own, including the lot that the original Derby had occupied. After the restaurant moved out in May 1936, the building was demolished and the hotel was expanded and occupied by October of the same year. The hotel itself was replaced in 1967 by the Equitable Life Building.


title: Brown Derby

text: In 1936, a larger building, also in the shape of a hat, was constructed at 3377 Wilshire Boulevard at the northeast corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Alexandria Avenue, about a block from its previous location (and directly across the street from the Ambassador Hotel). The restaurant was able to move into its new home in May of that year.


title: Brown Derby

text: In 1947's "Fun and Fancy Free" "Mickey and the Beanstalk", the cartoon ends with Willie the Giant's stomping through Hollywood looking for Mickey Mouse. Before the scene closes, Willie notices The Brown Derby restaurant and picks up the restaurant looking for Mickey. Willie notices the restaurant looks like a hat, places it on his head, and stomps off with the HOLLYWOOD lights blinking in the background.


title: Brown Derby

text: In September 1980, the restaurant closed without warning. Local preservationists worked to stop the building from being bulldozed, and convinced developers to remove and restore the derby hat portion of the building. The rest of the restaurant building was demolished and replaced with a shopping center. The derby-shaped structure was placed on the roof of the new building.


title: Brown Derby

text: The parking lot was replaced in late 1985 by a shopping center known as the Brown Derby Plaza. The domed structure was incorporated into the third floor of the building, and is currently vacant; it formerly accommodated a Korean bar (see photo at right with the brown dome in the recessed corner).


title: Brown Derby

text: Despite its less distinctive Spanish Mission style facade, the second Brown Derby, which opened on Valentine's Day 1929 at 1628 North Vine Street in Hollywood, was the branch that played the greater part in Hollywood history. Due to its proximity to movie studios, it became the place to do deals and be seen.


title: Brown Derby

text: Clark Gable is said to have proposed to Carole Lombard there. Rival gossip columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper are recorded as regular patrons.


title: Brown Derby

text: In the first of the Hollywood episodes of "I Love Lucy" ("L.A. at Last"), Lucy (Lucille Ball), Ethel (Vivian Vance), and Fred (William Frawley) have lunch at the Brown Derby. During the misadventure, the trio dines in a booth with Eve Arden on one side and William Holden (who orders a Cobb salad) on the other. This leads to the disaster scene in which Lucy inadvertently causes a waiter to hit Holden in the face with a pie.


title: Brown Derby

text: Like its Wilshire Boulevard counterpart, it had a celebrity wall with hundreds of celebrity drawings, paintings and caricatures. Jack Lane drew many of these caricatures between 1947 and 1985. Another artist whose work was displayed was Nicholas Volpe. He was commissioned by the Brown Derby to paint portraits of up to 200 top recording artists to be displayed in the restaurant's Hall of Fame Record Room. In addition, his Oscar-winning star portraits were displayed in the restaurant's "Academy Room," created for showing Volpe's art.


title: Brown Derby

text: The Hollywood Brown Derby is the purported birthplace of the Cobb salad, which was said to have been hastily arranged from leftovers by owner Bob Cobb for showman and theater owner Sid Grauman. It was chopped fine, because Grauman had just had dental work done, and couldn't chew well.


title: Brown Derby

text: According to Shirley Temple, the non-alcoholic drink bearing her name was invented at the Brown Derby in the mid-1930s. Temple herself never liked the drink and noted her personality rights had been used without permission.


title: Brown Derby

text: The Hollywood Brown Derby closed for the last time at its original site on April 3, 1985, as a result of a lease dispute. The building was later occupied by a restaurant called Arbat Continental Restaurant when the building was hit by an early morning fire that destroyed the kitchen. After the fire in 1987, the building remained unoccupied and deteriorated further while suffering frequent break-ins from homeless squatters and teenage gang members. As a result of damage caused by the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the building at 1628 North Vine Street was declared unsafe by the City of Los Angeles and was the first building in Hollywood ordered to be demolished. It was razed the following month.


title: Brown Derby

text: The building then was home to a restaurant and bar called Premieres of Hollywood, which catered to the revitalization of Hollywood Boulevard and the style of "Old Hollywood"; it offered an eclectic mix of American cuisine along with the original Cobb Salad (the recipe for which was found in the kitchen during the renovation). Premieres of Hollywood was destroyed during the L.A. riots in 1992. A few hand-painted wall tiles from the original Hollywood Brown Derby are held by the Jurus family, who started Premieres of Hollywood.


title: Brown Derby

text: After the original Hollywood Brown Derby at 1628 North Vine Street closed in April 1985 a spokesman for Walter P. Scharfe, who had purchased the chain a decade earlier, told the "Los Angeles Times" that the restaurant owner was “99% committed” to reopening the business at a new location. Late in 1986 Scharfe opened a new Brown Derby in the Lieberg Building at 911 E. Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, California. The new restaurant would utilize the dark booths, crystal chandeliers, and 1500 caricatures removed from the original location. Scharfe opened another Brown Derby at 1707 N. Vine Street in Hollywood in October 1987. The location had most recently been a Howard Johnson's coffee shop and reopened as a more casual version of the famous eatery with a large painted derby hat gracing the exterior walls. In 1987 Scharfe told the "Los Angeles Times" that he had plans to open additional Brown Derby restaurants in Palm Springs, Honolulu, and Vancouver. Both restaurants closed after a short time. In 1994 Scharfe opened another Brown Derby at the Beverly Center shopping mall. The small location featured miniature replicas of the famous caricatures and closed in less than one year.


title: Brown Derby

text: Bob Cobb opened the third Brown Derby in 1931 at 9537 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, across from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The building had previously housed a women's clothing store called "The Petite Shop." One of the dining areas was called The American Room and featured charcoal portraits of Academy Award-winning actors by artist Nicholas Volpe on the walls. The Beverly Hills Brown Derby featured a revolving door (the first in Beverly Hills) and a uniformed doorman. A 1938 expansion with a bar and private dining room was called "The Derby House" and was decorated in Old English style. It was closed in 1982 and demolished shortly afterwards. Developer Douglas Stitzel purchased the vacant property in 1986 to build the "One Rodeo" shopping development.


title: Brown Derby

text: The building that formerly housed the Los Feliz Brown Derby at 4500 Los Feliz Boulevard has been in use as a restaurant since the 1920s. Film mogul Cecil B. DeMille, a part owner of the Wilshire Blvd. restaurant, bought the building, a former chicken restaurant named Willard's, and converted it into a Brown Derby in 1940. It uniquely combined a formal restaurant with a dramatic domed ceiling with a more casual drive-in cafe outside. The building currently houses a restaurant called Mess Hall and a Chase bank.


title: Brown Derby

text: In 1960, it was purchased by actor Michael St. Angel (aka Steve Flagg) and became Michaels of Los Feliz, and in 1992 it was transformed by new owners Tony and Tammi Gower into a nightclub known as The Derby. In the late 1990s, it became one of the centers of the resurgence of swing dancing, which launched the careers of modern swing bands such as Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Johnny Crawford. Oregon rock/swing/ska band the Cherry Poppin' Daddies recorded a song that cites the venue, titled "Brown Derby Jump", on their album "Zoot Suit Riot".


title: Brown Derby

text: The Derby was prominently featured in the 1996 film "Swingers", in the scene where Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn's characters bypass the line at the front door, enter through the service entrance, walk through the kitchen, and into the club where Big Bad Voodoo Daddy are playing on the stage, in an ode to the classic restaurant scene with Ray Liotta in Scorsese's "Goodfellas".


title: Brown Derby

text: In June 2004, when Hillhurst/Los Feliz LLC purchased The Derby and adjacent lots with a view to demolition and replacement by a condominium complex, the planned redevelopment became a cause célèbre for historic preservation activists. An independent coalition called "Save The Derby" fought to prevent the demolition, and, on May 19, 2006, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to designate the entire structure an official Historic Cultural Monument of the City of Los Angeles.


title: Brown Derby

text: In January 2009, the nightclub closed its doors. The current landlord chose not to renew the lease, not long after a shooting inside the club. In 2012, the Los Feliz Brown Derby space is occupied by the gastropub "Mess Hall Kitchen" and a Chase bank, dividing the dome in half between the businesses. The interior framing details of the dome construction have been exposed and are now visible from inside the restaurant.


title: Brown Derby

text: A fifth Brown Derby opened in 1955 at the Broadway Crenshaw Shopping Center, now known as the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. It was a 24-hour coffee shop designed by architect Rowland Crawford and located near the center's Desmond's men's store The address was 3625 Stocker Avenue, Los Angeles, California. The location later became an early location of The International House of Pancakes


title: Brown Derby

text: The Brown Derby began a licensing program in 1987, with an agreement with The Walt Disney Company for a replica of the original Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant at the new Disney-MGM Studios in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. In 1990, the Walt Disney Company entered into three additional agreements for the Walt Disney Movie Studios at Disneyland Resort Paris, Tokyo Disney Sea at Tokyo Disney Resort and Disney California Adventure Park at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. In 1996, a ten-year agreement was entered into with MGM Grand Las Vegas Las Vegas, Nevada; in 1998, the MGM Grand Detroit, Michigan temporary facility was added.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: James Burke (born 22 December 1936) is a British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer. He was one of the main presenters of the BBC1 science series "Tomorrow's World" from 1965 to 1971 and created and presented the television series "Connections" (1978), and its more philosophical sequel "The Day the Universe Changed" (1985), about the history of science and technology. "The Washington Post" has called him "one of the most intriguing minds in the Western world".


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: Burke was born in Derry, Northern Ireland. He was educated at Maidstone Grammar School, and then served in the RAF from 1957 to 1959 before being accepted at Jesus College, Oxford, where he studied Middle English, obtaining both B.A. and M.A. degrees. Upon graduation he moved to Italy, where at the British School in Bologna he was lecturer in English and director of studies, 1961–63. He also lectured at the University of Urbino. Thereafter he was headmaster of the English School in Rome, 1963–65. He was involved in the creation of an English–Italian dictionary, and the publication of an art encyclopedia.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: Burke's entry into television was explained by "People" magazine in 1979: "Television beckoned by chance one day on a Rome bus. Spotting an ad for a reporter for the local bureau of Britain's Granada Television, he says, 'I decided if the bus stopped at the next corner I would get off and apply for the job.' It did, he did, and the next thing he knew 'we went straight off to Sicily to do a series on the Mafia.'"


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: In 1966, he moved to London and joined the Science and Features Department of the BBC, for which he was host or co-host of several programmes. He also worked as an instructor in English as a Foreign Language at the Regency Language School in Ramsgate.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: Burke established his reputation as a reporter on the BBC1 science series "Tomorrow's World" and went on to present "The Burke Special". He was BBC television's science anchorman and chief reporter for the Apollo missions, as the main presenter of the BBC's coverage of the first moon landing in 1969.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: In collaboration with Mick Jackson, he produced the ten-part documentary series "Connections" (1978), which was broadcast on the BBC, and subsequently on PBS in the United States. "Connections" traced the historical relationships between invention and discovery: each episode chronicled a particular path of technological development. "Connections" was the most-watched PBS television series up to that time. It was followed by the twenty-part "Connections" (1994) and the ten-part "Connections" (1997). "Connections: An Alternative View of Change" was broadcast in more than fifty countries and the companion book "Connections: An Alternative History of Technology" (1978) sold well. In 1980, Burke created and Jackson produced the six-part BBC series "The Real Thing", about perception.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: In 1985, Burke, with Richard Reisz and John Lynch, produced the ten-part television series "The Day the Universe Changed" (revised 1995), focusing on the philosophical aspects of scientific change in Western culture.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: Burke has been a regular writer for "Scientific American" and "Time", and a consultant to the SETI project.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: Burke received the gold and the silver medals of the Royal Television Society. In 1998 he was made an honorary fellow of the Society for Technical Communication.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: Burke has contributed to podcasts, such as in 2008 when he appeared on "Hardcore History" with Dan Carlin, and in 2016 on "Common Sense" with Dan Carlin, and to newspaper articles including two series for the "Mogollon Connection" by Jesse Horn, one focusing on the nature of morality, the other on the future of our youth.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: Burke presented a monologue "James Burke on the End of Scarcity", first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 26 December 2017, in which he predicted nanotech-manufacturing would revolutionize the world economy and society. He has been writing his current book, "Culture of Scarcity", since 2017.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: In a May 2020 interview, Burke said that he was writing a new "Connections" book, which would be the basis for a new television series titled "Connections 21", slated to air in January 2022.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: Burke is the leading figure in the development of the "Knowledge Web", the planned digital realization of his books and television programmes, which would allow the user to travel through history and create his or her own connections. Eventually, the project may feature immersive virtual-reality historical recreations of people, places, and events.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: In 2019 he produced a series of five 15-minute programmes for BBC Radio 4 with the title "James Burke's Web of Knowledge", in each of which he traced the connections between two widely separated people or themes, the first programme connecting Mozart to the helicopter.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: In an article for the "Radio Times" in 1973, Burke predicted the widespread use of computers for business decisions, the creation of metadata banks of personal information, and changes in human behaviour, such as greater willingness to reveal personal information to strangers. In an interview on the "PM" programme on BBC Radio 4 on 30 August 2013, Burke discussed his predictions of a post-scarcity economy driven by advances in nanofactories, which he believes may be viable by the year 2043.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: Burke posed at least one of his predictions as a question. In "Connections", he notes that the increase in connections over time causes the rate of innovation to accelerate, and asks what happens when this rate, or more importantly "change" itself, becomes too much for the average person to handle. He also questions what this would mean for individual power, liberty, and privacy.


title: James Burke (science historian)

text: In the conclusion of "Connections", Burke said that computing and communications might be controlled by a computer science élite. Later, he suggested at the conclusion of "The Day the Universe Changed" that a worldwide revolution in communications and computer technology would allow people to instantaneously exchange ideas and opinions.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Human rights in Saudi Arabia are a topic of concern and controversy. The Saudi government, which mandates both Muslim and non-Muslim observance of Islamic law under the absolute rule of the House of Saud, has been accused of and denounced by various international organizations and governments for violating human rights within the country. The authoritarian regime ruling the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is consistently ranked among the "worst of the worst" in Freedom House's annual survey of political and civil rights.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 28 December 2020, the Criminal Court in Riyadh sentenced a prominent Saudi women's rights activist to nearly two years in prison, drawing renewed attention to the kingdom's human rights abuses.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Qorvis MSLGroup, a U.S. subsidiary of Publicis Groupe, has been working with Saudi Arabia amidst its executions of political protesters and opponents for more than a decade to whitewash its record of human rights abuses.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy in which all legislative, executive, and judiciary power ultimately rests in the hands of the king, who is both head of state and head of government. The 1992 Basic Law sets out the system of governance, rights of citizens, and powers and duties of the government, and it provides that the Quran and Sunnah (the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) serve as the country's constitution. Saudi Arabia is one of approximately 30 countries in the world with judicial corporal punishment. In Saudi Arabia's case this includes amputations of hands and feet for robbery, and flogging for lesser crimes such as "sexual deviance" and drunkenness. In April 2020, the Saudi Supreme Court abolished the flogging punishment from its system and replaced it with jail time and fines. In the 2000s, it was reported that women were sentenced to lashes for adultery; the women were actually victims of rape, but because they could not prove who the perpetrators were, they were deemed guilty of committing adultery. The number of lashes is not clearly prescribed by law and is varied according to the discretion of judges, and ranges from dozens of lashes to several hundred, usually applied over a period of weeks or months. In 2004, the United Nations Committee Against Torture criticized Saudi Arabia over the amputations and floggings it carries out under Sharia. The Saudi delegation responded defending "legal traditions" held since the inception of Islam 1,400 years ago and rejected interference in its legal system. Saudi Arabia later abolished the punishment of flogging, and replaced it by jail time or fines, or both.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: The courts continue to impose sentences of flogging as a principal or additional punishment for many offences. At least five defendants were sentenced to flogging of 1,000 to 2,500 lashes. Flogging was carried out in prisons. Since April 2020, flogging is no longer carried out as a punishment in the Saudi court system.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 2009, Mazen Abdul-Jawad was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and five years in prison for bragging on a Saudi TV show about his sexual exploits.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 2014, Saudi blogger Raif Badawi's sentence was increased to 1,000 lashes and ten years' imprisonment after he was accused of apostasy in 2012. The lashes were due to take place over 20 weeks. The first round (50) were administered on 9 January 2015, but the second round has been postponed due to medical problems. The case was internationally condemned and put a considerable amount of pressure on the Saudi legal system.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In October 2015, UK pensioner and cancer victim Karl Andree, then 74, faced 360 lashes for home brewing alcohol. His family feared the punishment could kill him. However, he was released and returned home in November that year.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 2016, a Saudi man was sentenced to 2,000 lashes, ten years in prison and a fine of 20,000 riyals (US$5,300) for making tweets critical of Islam, and denying the existence of God.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In September 2018, the official Twitter account of the Saudi Arabia prosecutors issued a warning to punish those who share anything satirical on social media that "affects public order, religious values and public morals". The punishment included a five-year prison term and a fine of 3 million riyals (US$800,000). The government of Saudi Arabia arrested a few intellectuals, businessmen and activists last year for the same reason.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: While Saudi Arabia's Criminal Procedure Code prohibits "torture" and "undignified treatment" (art. 2) in practice torture and using torture to extract forced confessions of guilt remains common.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: According to Amnesty International, security forces continued to torture and ill-treat detainees to extract confessions to be used as evidence against them at trial. According to the organization, 32 defendants accused of spying for Iran were subjected to torture and forced to confess. Detainees were held incommunicado and denied access to their families.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 2018, a UN panel that visited Saudi Arabia on the kingdom's invitation to conduct an inspection, revealed that the country has been systematically using anti-terror laws to justify torture. The report found that Saudis, who have been exercising their right to freedom of expression peacefully and calmly in the kingdom, have been systematically persecuted by the authorities.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Walid Fitaihi is a physician who studied and worked in the US in the 1980s. He was born in 1964 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He went back to Saudi Arabia in 2006. Fitaihi was arrested at the Ritz Carlton hotel in November 2017 and moved to al-Hair prison south of the capital. The Ritz-Carlton hotel was used to hold many of the prominent prisoners of the Saudi government in 2017, according to Saudi activists. Al Jazeera reported, Fitaihi told a friend he was "blindfolded, stripped of his underwear and bound to a chair". The daily report also said that, the Saudi government tortured him with electrical shocks, "what appears to have been a single session of torture that lasted about an hour". Reports also said he was whipped so severely he could not sleep on his back for days.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In August 2019, a news article released in "The Independent" reported that more than 100 female migrants of Bangladeshi descent and some 45 male migrants fled from Saudi Arabia following psychological and sexual harassment from employers.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Prince Faisal bin Abdullah Al Saud, the former head of the Saudi Red Crescent Society and son of late King Abdullah, was arrested on 27 March 2020 and has since been kept under incommunicado detention. In November 2017, Prince Faisal was first arrested and put under arbitrary detention in the famous Ritz-Carlton purge. He was later released in December 2017 on the condition of handing over his assets. Currently, the authorities keeping him under detention refuse to share his whereabouts or status of health and well-being, according to Human Rights Watch.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 19 November 2020, the "Independent" reported human rights violations endured by women's rights activists and political prisoners in Saudi Arabian jails, based on a report by the Grant Liberty organization. Reportedly, women's rights activists and political prisoners have been sexually assaulted, tortured, and killed in Saudi Arabian detention cells. According to the research, 20 prisoners were arrested for political crimes, five of whom had already been put to death, while the remaining 13 face the death penalty. The report was released days before Saudi Arabia hosted the 2020 G20 Summit, which had female empowerment prominently on its agenda.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: The death penalty is permitted in Saudi Arabia for such crimes as rape, murder, apostasy, sedition, sorcery, armed robbery, adultery and drug trafficking. While some of these crimes, such as premeditated murder, carry fixed punishments under Sharia law, other crimes such as drug-related offenses, are considered tazir, with neither the crime nor the punishment defined in Islam. In 2005, there were 191 executions; in 2006, 38; in 2007, 153; and in 2008, 102.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: A spokesman for the National Society for Human Rights, an organization which is funded by the Saudi monarchy, said that the number of executions is rising because crime rates are rising, that prisoners are treated humanely, and that the beheadings deter crime, saying, "Allah, our creator, knows best what's good for His people...Should we just think of and preserve the rights of the murderer and not think of the rights of others?"


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabian police and immigration authorities routinely abuse people who are stopped or detained, especially workers from developing countries. Earlier in November 2013, the authorities received criticism for the way they have planned and handled the crackdown on illegal workers. Saudi authorities – in some cases with the help of citizens – rounded up many illegal workers and physically abused them.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 23 April 2019, Saudi Arabia carried out mass executions of 37 imprisoned civilians who had been convicted mostly on the basis of confessions obtained under torture or written by the accused's torturers. Most of the executed belonged to the country's Shia minority.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In April 2020, the Saudi Supreme Court announced under a royal decree by King Salman that minors who commit crimes will no longer face the death sentence, but will be sentenced up to 10 years imprisonment in a juvenile detention facility.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In March 2021, Human Rights Watch said that Abdullah al-Huwaiti, who was 14 at the time of the alleged crime, could face execution following a grossly unfair trial, despite the kingdom having scrapped the death penalty for juveniles. On 2 March 2022, al-Huwaiti was sentenced to death following a grossly unfair trial and torture-tainted confession. The ruling defied the international ban on the child death penalty. Al-Huwaiti was first sentenced to death at the age of 17, which was overturned by the Saudi Supreme Court on the basis of a false confession and insufficient evidence. But, in 2022, a criminal court in the northern province of Tabuk again sentenced him to death, this time under the Islamic law principle of ta'zir.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In November 2021, sixteen British MPs and peers urged foreign secretary Liz Truss to intervene and stop Saudi Arabia from sentencing the Saudi scholar Hassan al-Maliki to death. Al-Maliki has been behind bars since 2017 on multiple charges, including "conducting interviews with western news outlets" and "owning books" that are unauthorised by the Saudi government. He was held incommunicado and in solitary confinement for three months. Labour MP Andy Slaughter said the treatment of the prominent academic was "totally incompatible with the reforms espoused by crown prince Mohammed bin Salman."


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Sentencing a child to death is prohibited under international law without derogation under any circumstances. But it is a common occurrence in Saudi Arabia. Also, in Saudi Arabia, people accused of crimes, including children, commonly face systematic violations of due process and fair trial rights, including arbitrary arrest. In May 2022, a group of United Nations experts called upon Saudi authorities to revoke the death sentence against Abdullah al-Howaiti, and initiate investigation into the allegations of torture and authenticity of the coerced confession. The experts believe that "The death penalty against juvenile offenders in Saudi Arabia is the arbitrary deprivation of life".


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 15 August 2022, the Washington Post reported that Saudi Arabia has executed 120 people in the first six months of 2022. It's double the number of people put to death in 2021, despite the promises by the government to reduce capital punishment. Most of the executions in 2022 took place on one day in March when 81 men were put to death in the single largest mass execution. According to the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights, 72 of the executions in 2022 were for "discretionary offenses," despite promises by the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman to end the use of the death penalty for such offenses.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In November 2022, Saudi Arabia executed nearly 17 people in a few days, including 7 Saudis and 10 foreign nationals. The executions took place behind closed doors, where most were beheaded using swords and rest were shot. The bodies of the dead were not returned to their families. The number of executions in 2022 increased to at least 137, which was more than the total of 2020 and 2021 together.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia is a notable destination country for men and women trafficked for the purposes of slave labour and commercial sexual exploitation. Men and women from Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, and many other countries voluntarily travel to Saudi Arabia as domestic servants or other low-skilled labourers, but some subsequently face conditions indicative of involuntary servitude.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Women, primarily from Asian and African countries are trafficked into Saudi Arabia for commercial sexual exploitation; others were kidnapped and forced into prostitution after running away from abusive employers.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Some Saudi men have also used contracted "temporary marriages" in countries such as Mauritania, Yemen, and Indonesia as a means by which to sexually exploit migrant workers. Females are led to believe they are being wed in earnest, but upon arrival in Saudi Arabia subsequently become their husbands' sexual slaves, are forced into domestic labor and, in some cases, prostitution. Prostitution is illegal in Saudi Arabia.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi women face discrimination in many aspects of their lives, such as the justice system, and under the male guardianship system are effectively treated as legal minors. Although they make up 70% of those enrolled in universities, for social reasons, women make up 5% of the workforce in Saudi Arabia, the lowest proportion in the world.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: The treatment of women has been referred to as "sex segregation","gender apartheid", and of some women being "prisoners" of their male relatives. Implementation of a government resolution supporting expanded employment opportunities for women met resistance from within the labor ministry, from the religious police, and from the male citizenry.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In many parts of Saudi Arabia, it is believed that a woman's place is in the home caring for her husband and family, yet there are some women who do not adhere to this view and practice, and some run the house instead of the husband himself. Moreover, there is also some type of segregation at homes, such as different entrances for men and women.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Women's rights are at the heart of calls for reform in Saudi Arabia – calls that are challenging the kingdom's political status quo. Local and international women's groups are also pushing governments to respond, taking advantage of the fact that some rulers are eager to project a more progressive image to the West. Since 2009, women and their male supporters have been organizing an anti male-guardianship campaign. Female leaders of this movement have been imprisoned without charge. Women in general who challenge the guardianship system may be sent to shelters for troubled women, where according to human rights activists they face torture and sexual abuse. Men are free to abuse women in Saudi Arabia, with reports of women being locked in their rooms for months or threatened with starvation or shooting for offenses such as getting the wrong kind of haircut or being in a relationship with a man the family has not approved. Women cannot file police reports without the permission of a male guardian, and may end up being imprisoned by the government for complaining. Women are prohibited from certain professions (such as optometry) and may be prohibited from mixing with men at work, but according to the government as of 2017 compose 30% of workers in the private sector (which is 40% of GDP).


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: The presence of powerful businesswomen—still a rare sight—in some of these groups helps get them heard. Prior to 2008, women were not allowed to enter hotels and furnished apartments without a chaperone or mahram. With a 2008 Royal Decree, however, the only requirement for a woman to be allowed to enter hotels is a national ID card, and (as with male guests) the hotel must inform the nearest police station of their room reservation and length of stay. In April 2010, a new, optional ID card for women was issued which allows them to travel in countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The cards include GPS tracking, fingerprints and features that make them difficult to forge. Women do not need male permission to apply for the card, but do need it to travel abroad. Proponents argue that new female identity cards enable a woman to carry out her activities with ease, and prevent forgeries committed in the name of women.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Women first joined the Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia in 2013, occupying thirty seats. Furthermore, that year three women were named as deputy chairpersons of three committees. Thurayya Obeid was named Deputy Chairwoman of the Human Rights and Petitions Committee, Zainab Abu Talib, Deputy Chairwoman of the Information and Cultural Committee, and Lubna Al-Ansari, Deputy Chairwoman of the Health Affairs and Environment Committee.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 2013 the Directorate General of Passports allowed Saudi women married to foreigners to sponsor their children, so that the children can have residency permits (iqamas) with their mothers named as the sponsors, and have the right to work in the private sector in Saudi Arabia while on the sponsorship of their mothers, and the mother can also bring her children who are living abroad back to Saudi Arabia if they have no criminal records. Foreign men married to Saudi women were also granted the right to work in the private sector in Saudi Arabia while on the sponsorship of their wives on condition that the title on their iqamas should be written as "husband of a Saudi wife" and that they should have valid passports enabling them to return to their homes at any time. Saudi women married to foreigners, however, still face difficulty in passing their nationality to their children.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Also in 2013, Saudi Arabia registered its first female trainee lawyer, Arwa al-Hujaili. In Saudi courts, the testimony of women is weighted half that of a man's.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: According to the CIA world factbook, 82.2% of females are literate, in comparison to 90.8% literacy rates in males.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In the year 2018, the Saudi government changed several policies, allowing women to drive with the permission of their guardian, attend sporting events in gender-segregated areas, participate in sports (including exercising on public streets), and eliminated the need for male permission to receive education, get healthcare, or open a business. It began offering physical education for girls and said it would start licensing female-only gyms. The government opened the military to women in March, who can serve if they meet certain physical and educational requirements, continue to live with their male guardian in the province of service, and get male permission. It also granted divorced women the ability to retain custody of children without petitioning. Male permission is still required to apply for a passport, travel, marry, divorce, or leave jail. Men and women are also still segregated on public transport, beaches, and pools. In practice, some doctors still require male permission before providing services, and male permission may be needed to rent an apartment or file a legal claim. In 2019, the Saudi government has been taken new measures to release male guardianship. Thus, women will be soon allowed to travel abroad without the need of getting the permission of their male guardians.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In July 2018, two prominent female human rights activists, Samar Badawi and Nassima al-Sada, were arrested for challenging Saudi Arabia's male guardianship laws. According to Amnesty International, several arrested women's rights activists detained without charge in Dhahban Prison are enduring torture by electrocution, flogging, hanging from the ceiling, and sexual assault.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In October 2018, under the predominant male guardianship system, a Saudi woman lost a legal battle to marry the man she wanted to because he played a musical instrument, many conservative Muslims in the kingdom consider music to be "haram" (forbidden). The male relative of the woman did not allow her to marry the man of her choice citing religious incompatibility as the man played oud.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia is not a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which among many other issues prohibits forced marriages. However, it is part of the Human Rights council.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: The World Economic Forum in its Global Gender Gap Report 2018 ranked Saudi Arabia 141 out of 149 countries on gender equality.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 2019, the government also stated that women can start working in the military. In the past they could only work in police.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: During April and May 2020, Princess Basmah bint Saud bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who has been imprisoned for the past fourteen months, expected to be granted mercy and released, but wasn't. Princess Basmah's cousin, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman issued her arrest and detention in 2019 for possessing a fake passport, when she was trying to allegedly flee Saudi Arabia. She was arrested along with her 28-year-old daughter from their apartment in Jeddah on 1 March 2019. Princess Basmah was imprisoned even after the charges held against her were dropped and she reported of having a "health status VERY critical." She disclosed about her health condition in a series of tweets addressed to her uncle and cousin, crown prince and king Salman. She was released on 6 January 2022.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 5 November 2020, UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) appealed Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to release women rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul. CEDAW also expressed concerns over her health conditions, as the Saudi authority was not following the UN Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners, which allows prisoners to regularly contact their family members.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 30 November 2020, seven European human rights ambassadors criticized Saudi Arabia over the continued detention of at least five women's rights activists, including Loujain al-Hathloul, whose case was referred to a special court for terrorism offenses in that month. On 25 November 2020, Loujain appeared in a Saudi court, as her trial was scheduled to start after 900 days in pre-trial detention. However, the court instead referred the case to the Specialized Criminal Court for terrorism and national security cases.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Following immense scrutiny from the US, Loujain al-Hathloul was released on probation on 10 February 2021. Apart from a five-year long travel ban imposed on Hathloul, she also had to sign a pledge as part of her release which states that she cannot publicly disclose her case or reveal any details about the prison nor celebrate her release publicly.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In February 2021, Saudi women were granted permission to join military and army professional fields. Women in Saudi Arabia can now be employed as soldiers, lance corporals, corporals, sergeants, and staff sergeants.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia does not have any legal aid for women fleeing abuse or those disowned by their male guardians. In Saudi Arabia a network of notorious detention centers captures women who are under investigation or trial or those whose guardian deem them as socially incorrect. The network of these detention facilities are called as Dar Al Reaya. A former detainee revealed that many women are held there for mere disobedience or minor disagreements at home. Some of the female detainees were even held without charges. These detention facilities are overseen by Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development. The detainees at Dar Al Reaya are held in appalling conditions, ranging from compulsory solitary confinement to flogging. Women there are even forbidden from speaking to each other. Women whose guardian does not allow her freedom even after her sentence at Dar Al Reaya is completed, are send to Dar Al Theyafa, another detention facility run by the government. Then either the detainee is married off without any choice or kept imprisoned indefinitely. In Saudi legislation, there's no penal code or clarity on what actions are criminal for women.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia was the only country in the world where women were forbidden to drive motor vehicles until June 2018. The motoring ban was not in statute law, but was an "informal" religious fatwa imposed by conservative Muslim clerics in order to maintain the country's tradition of gender segregation, although this religious view has changed in recent years.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 1990, when 47 Saudi women drove cars through the streets of Riyadh in protest against the ban, protestors were punished and was reported: "All the drivers, and their husbands, were barred from foreign travel for a year. Those women who had government jobs were fired, once their employers found out. And from hundreds of mosque pulpits, they were denounced by name as immoral women out to destroy Saudi society."


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: When the driving ban was enforced, women complained that "we can't move around without a male". Many could not afford chauffeurs, and the few buses that do operate in cities and towns across the Kingdom do not follow a set schedule. On 26 October 2013, a group of women started a movement to defy the ban by driving themselves. However, on 23 October, in a "rare and explicit restating of the ban", Interior Ministry Spokesman General Mansur al-Turki warned: "It is known that women in Saudi are banned from driving and laws will be applied against violators and those who demonstrate support." In December 2014, two women were arrested and sentenced to almost a month of prison for defying the female driving ban.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Women are allowed to fly aircraft, though they must be chauffeured to the airport. A Saudi woman made news in 2007 when she became the first woman to get her pilot's license. The woman, Hanadi al-Hindi works for Saudi Prince Al Waleed.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Hisham Fageeh, a Saudi living in the US, has created a video which makes a reference to the Government's rules which prevented women from driving. The video was released the same day many women in Saudi Arabia staged a nationwide protest against the Government.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 2015, a Saudi woman working in neighboring UAE was arrested as she tried to enter Saudi Arabia. She had her passport taken from her and was forced to wait at the Saudi-UAE border without any food or water. She claimed that her UAE drivers license was valid in all GCC countries, but the Saudi border authorities refused to acknowledge its legitimacy.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 2017, a royal decree was issued to allowing women to drive. The first driving license was issued to a Saudi woman in June 2018 and the ban on driving was lifted on 24 June 2018. Between the announcement and the lifting of the ban, the leaders of the Women to Drive campaign who violated the ban were arrested and tortured.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Male permission is still required to travel outside the home, so many women in conservative families are still not allowed to drive.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: 15 May 2020, marks the two-year anniversary of the detained women rights activists. They were advocating for the right to drive for women in Saudi. Amnesty International has urged the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to release the women rights defenders in detention for the past two years.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 26 October 2020, women rights activist Loujain started a hunger strike for not being allowed to speak with her family members during her time in detention. Her sister Lina told "The Daily Telegraph" that she did not ask for her freedom, but only a regular voice call with her parents to let them know that she hasn't disappeared.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 5 November 2020, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) called on Saudi Arabia to release all the women human rights defenders in detention, including Loujain al-Hathloul, whose health was deteriorating because of her hunger strike that started on 26 October 2020. Although released after 3 years of imprisonment, Saudi activist Loujain al-Hathloul is still captivated by a government imposed invisible leash of travel ban. The activist, along with her family members, has been barred from exiting the country.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Racism in Saudi Arabia extends to allegations of imprisonment, physical abuse, rape, overwork and wage theft, especially of foreign workers who are given little protections under the law.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabian media often attacks Jews in books, news articles, at their Mosques, and with what some describe as anti semitic satire. Saudi Arabian government officials and state religious leaders often promote the idea that Jews are conspiring to take over the entire world; as proof of their claims, they publish and frequently cite "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" as factual. During the Gulf War (1990–1991), when approximately a half million U.S. military personnel assembled in Saudi Arabia, and many were then stationed there, there were many Jewish U.S. service personnel in Saudi Arabia. It is reported that the Saudi government insisted that Jewish religious services not be held on their soil but that Jewish soldiers be flown to nearby US warships.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: According to the 2016 Amnesty International annual report, Saudi authorities detained and deported hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants, while tens of thousands were fired without having been paid for months and were left stranded without food, water or exit visas.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 20 April, it was reported that the migrant workers in Saudi Arabia faced severe conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Where the country was under a lockdown to prevent the spread of the virus, these migrant workers were left helpless with no jobs. Due to the shortage of money, a number of these workers, particularly from Bangladesh, were living without food and lack of support from the Saudi authorities.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 30 August 2020, an investigation by "The Daily Telegraph" reported that hundreds of African migrants were locked up in degraded conditions in Saudi Arabian Covid detention centres. Video sent to the newspaper showed dozens of emaciated men crippled by the Arabian heat, lying shirtless in tightly packed rows in small rooms with barred windows.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 2 October 2020, an Amnesty International investigation revealed that at least three migrants had died in Saudi detention centers, which have been holding thousands of Ethiopian migrants, according to eyewitness testimonies. Amnesty urged Saudi authorities to immediately release all arbitrarily detained migrants, and improve the conditions of detention centers.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 8 October 2020, the European Parliament raised concerns, after it was revealed in an investigation that Saudi Arabia is holding tens of thousands of African migrants in hellish conditions in detention centers. Members of the European Parliament passed a resolution denouncing a series of human rights abuse by the regime of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman. They also urged the EU states to minimize their representation at the G20 Riyadh Summit that year, so that the rights violations by Saudi don't get legitimized.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In March 2021, Saudi Arabia introduced new labour reforms, allowing some migrant workers to change jobs without employer's consent. However, Human Rights Watch claimed that the reforms still don't dismantle the abusive kafala system, leaving migrant workers at high risk of abuse.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: An investigation by France 24 in April 2021 revealed the plight of female migrant workers in the kingdom. A 22-year-old girl from Madagascar, who emigrated to Saudi to work as a maid, was brutally murdered and disgracefully buried without a proper funeral in Al-Jubail. Due to the kafala system that allows sponsors to confiscate the passports of migrant workers, young girls from East Africa find it difficult to return home despite being sexually assaulted, tortured and mistreated by their employers. The girls often end up falling into prostitution.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: There are 70,000 stateless people in Saudi Arabia, also known as Bedoon. Some stateless are Yemenis who moved to Saudi Arabia, before the borders were in place.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Every summer, the Saudi Ministry of Labor and Social Development enforce a 3-months midday outdoor work ban. The main aim of this ban is to protect laborers from being directly exposed to the sun and high-temperature. Laborers, either Saudi Nationals or foreigners, are able to file any violations through the ministry's portal.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: According to other sources though, there are human rights violations, even during Ramadan. The workers might work less but they will be paid less.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabian law does not recognize religious freedom, and the public practice of non-Muslim religions is actively prohibited.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: No law specifically requires citizens to be Muslims, but article 12.4 of the Naturalization Law requires that applicants attest to their religious affiliation, and article 14.1 requires that applicants get a certificate endorsed by their local cleric. The Government has declared the Quran and the Sunna (tradition) of the Islamic prophet Muhammad to be the country's constitution. Neither the Government nor society in general accepts the concepts of separation of religion and state, and such separation does not exist. The legal system is based on Shari'a (Islamic law), with Shari'a courts basing their judgments largely on a code derived from the Quran and the Sunna. According to Human Rights Watch, Saudi Arabia "systematically discriminates against its Muslim religious minorities, in particular Shia and Ismailis", but the Government permits Shi'a Muslims to use their own legal tradition to adjudicate noncriminal cases within their community.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Testifying before the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus, Ali al-Ahmed, Director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, stated:


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia is a glaring example of religious apartheid. The religious institutions from government clerics to judges, to religious curriculums, and all religious instructions in media are restricted to the Wahhabi understanding of Islam, adhered to by less than 40% of the population. The Saudi government communized Islam, through its monopoly of both religious thoughts and practice. Wahhabi Islam is imposed and enforced on all Saudis regardless of their religious orientations. The Wahhabi sect does not tolerate other religious or ideological beliefs, Muslim or not. Religious symbols by Muslims, Christians, Jewish and other believers are all banned. The Saudi embassy in Washington is a living example of religious apartheid. In its 50 years, there has not been a single non-Sunni Muslim diplomat in the embassy. The branch of Imam Mohamed Bin Saud University in Fairfax, Virginia instructs its students that Shia Islam is a Jewish conspiracy.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 2014, Saudi Arabia enacted new "anti-terrorism" legislation. Human Rights Watch criticized the broad language of the legislation and related government decrees, which have been used to prosecute and punish peaceful political activists and dissidents. HEW stated "these recent laws and regulations turn almost any critical expression or independent association into crimes of terrorism." A number of prominent human rights activists were detained under the new law, including Waleed Abulkhair and Mikhlif Alshammari. Interior Ministry regulations also defined "calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based" as terrorism.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia abstained from the United Nations vote adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, saying it contradicted sharia law.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: It is not a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which includes freedom of religion. The country holds a reservation to the Convention on the Rights of the Child against any provisions that are in conflict with sharia law; Article 14 gives freedom of "thought, conscience and religion" to children.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia and some of the Gulf states have been carrying out airstrikes on the Yemen, violating international laws and arresting anyone that criticizes them.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: There has been virtually no Jewish activity in Saudi Arabia since the beginning of the 21st century. Census data do not identify any Jews as residing within Saudi Arabian territory.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: As an Islamic state, Saudi Arabia gives preferential treatment for Muslims. During Ramadan, eating, drinking, or smoking in public during daylight hours is not allowed. Foreign schools are often required to teach a yearly introductory segment on Islam.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi religious police have detained Shi'ite pilgrims participating in the Hajj, allegedly calling them "infidels in Mecca". The restrictions on the Shi'a branch of Islam in the Kingdom along with the banning of displaying Jewish, Hindu and Christian symbols have been referred to as apartheid.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: The Saudi government has gone further than stopping Christians from worshipping in publicly designated buildings to even raid private prayer meetings among Christian believers in their own homes. On 15 December 2011, Saudi security forces arrested 35 Ethiopian Christians in Jeddah who were praying in a home, beating them and threatening them with death. When the Ethiopian workers' employers asked security forces for what reason they were arrested, they said "for practicing Christianity". Later, under mounting international pressure, this charge was changed to "mixing with the opposite sex".


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In December 2012, Saudi religious police detained more than 41 individuals after storming a house in the Saudi Arabian province of al-Jouf. They were accused of "plotting to celebrate Christmas," according to a 26 December statement released by the police branch. Proselytizing by non-Muslims, including the distribution of non-Muslim religious materials such as Bibles, is illegal in Saudi Arabia.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: The Saudi government has often been viewed as an active oppressor of Shia Muslims because of the funding of the Wahhabi ideology which denounces the Shia faith.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 1988 fatwas passed by the country's leading cleric, Abdul-Aziz ibn Baz denounced the Shias as apostates. Another by Abdul-Rahman al-Jibrin, a member of the Higher Council of Ulama is on record as saying


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Some people say that the rejectionists ("Rafidha", i.e. Shia) are Muslims because they believe in God and his prophet, pray and fast. But I say they are heretics. They are the most vicious enemy of Muslims, who should be wary of their plots. They should be boycotted and expelled so that Muslims be spared their evil.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: According to Vali Nasr, al-Jibrin's sanctioning of the killing of Shia was reiterated in Wahhabi religious literature as late as 2002.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: According to a 2009 Human Rights Watch report, Shia citizens in Saudi Arabia "face systematic discrimination in religion, education, justice, and employment".


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi Arabia has no Shia cabinet ministers, mayors or police chiefs, according to another source, Vali Nasr, unlike other countries with sizable Shia populations (such as Iraq and Lebanon). Shia are kept out of "critical jobs" in the armed forces and the security services, and not one of the three hundred Shia girls' schools in the Eastern Province has a Shia principal.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In November 2014 at al-Dalwah village in the eastern province of al-Ahsa, three unknown masked gunmen opened fire at a Husseiniya, or Shi'ite religious center, killing eight and injuring dozens.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: While the government and the official media and religious establishment strongly condemned the attack, a handful of articles in the Saudi press argued that the attack "had not come out of nowhere", that there was anti-Shi'ite incitement in the kingdom on the part of "the religious establishment, preachers, and even university lecturers – and that it was on the rise".


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Shiites are banned from building mosques and other religious centers and are forced to perform Friday prayers in homes (Al-Hassan). In the Eastern city of Al-Khobar, whose population is predominately Shia, there are no Shia mosques. Saudi Arabia's religious police mandate prayers and all those in public buildings during prayer time are required to stop what they are doing to pray. Because there are minor differences between the way that Shiites and Sunnis pray and between prayer times, Shiites are forced to either pray the Sunni way or take a break from work.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 2009 a group of Shiites on their way to perform hajj pilgrimage (one of the five pillars of Islam that all able-bodied Muslims are required to perform once in their lives) in Mecca were arrested by Saudi religious police. Between 20 and 24 February 2009, Shia pilgrims from the heavily Shia Eastern Province who had come to Medina for the anniversary of Muhammad's death clashed with Sunni religious police at the Baqi' cemetery over doctrinal differences concerning the rituals surrounding commemoration of the dead. Security forces shot a 15-year-old pilgrim in the chest, and an unknown civilian stabbed a Shia religious sheikh in the back with a knife, shouting "Kill the rejectionist [Shia]". The authorities denied that anyone had been wounded and played down the ensuing arrests of Shia pilgrims.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Religious police have arrested Shia women in the Eastern Province for matters as trivial as organizing classes for Quranic studies and selling clothing for religious ceremonies as if they were involved in political activities which are not allowed in KSA.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In the eastern city of Dammam where three quarters of the 400,000 residents are Shia, there are no Shia mosques or prayer halls, no Shia call to prayer broadcast on TV, and no cemeteries for Shia.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Late 2011, a Shiite pilgrim was charged for being "involved with blasphemy" and sentenced to 500 lashes and 2 years in jail. Also late 2011, a prominent Shiite Canadian cleric, Usama al-Attar. He was released on the same day, declaring the arrest entirely unprovoked.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Much of education in Saudi Arabia is based on Sunni Wahhabi religious material. From a very young age, students are taught that Shiites are not Muslims and that Shiism is a conspiracy hatched by the Jews, and so Shiites are worthy of death. Government Wahhabi scholars, such as Abdulqader Shaibat al-Hamd, have proclaimed on state radio that Sunni Muslims must not "eat their [Shia] food, marry from them, or bury their dead in Muslims' graveyards".


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: The government has restricted the names that Shias can use for their children in an attempt to discourage them from showing their identity. Saudi textbooks are hostile to Shiism, often characterizing the faith as a form of heresy worse than Christianity and Judaism.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Because anti-Shia attitudes are engrained from an early age, they are passed down from generation to generation. This prejudice is found not only in textbooks, but also within the teachers in the classroom, and even in the university setting. (Wahhabi) teachers frequently tell classrooms full of young Shia schoolchildren that they are heretics. Teachers who proclaim that Shiites are atheists and deserve death have faced no repercussions for their actions, barely even receiving punishment. At a seminar about the internet, held in King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology, professor Bader Hmood Albader explained that the internet was beneficial to society, but that there were many Shia websites claiming to be Muslim websites, which needed to be stopped.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Much discrimination occurs in the Saudi workforce as well. Shiites are prohibited from becoming teachers of religious subjects, which constitute about half of the courses in secondary education. Shiites cannot become principals of schools. Some Shiites have become university professors but often face harassment from students and faculty alike. Shiites are disqualified as witnesses in court, as Saudi Sunni sources cite the Shi'a practice of Taqiyya, wherein it is permissible to lie while they are in fear or at risk of significant persecution. Shia cannot serve as judges in ordinary court, and are banned from gaining admission to military academies, and from high-ranking government or security posts, including becoming pilots in Saudi Airlines.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: The Saudi government has often been viewed as an active oppressor of Shias because of the funding of the Wahabbi ideology which denounces the Shia faith. In 1988, fatwas passed by the country's leading cleric, Abdul-Aziz ibn Baz denounced the Shias as apostates.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In January 2016, Saudi Arabia executed the prominent Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr, who had called for pro-democracy demonstrations, along with 47 other Saudi citizens sentenced by the Specialized Criminal Court on terrorism charges.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In May 2019, Human Rights Watch said that Saudi Arabia was seeking to extend the jail term for Sheikh Mohammad bin Hassan al-Habib, who the human rights group described as "a cleric known for supporting protests against the systematic discrimination of Saudi Arabia's Shia minority". At the time, Hassan al-Habib had been serving a seven-year prison sentence.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Several countries were abolishing death penalty in law or practice, but Saudi Arabia continued the trend. The "Amnesty International" identified a sharp increase in executions and death sentences in Saudi Arabia in its 2021 annual review. As compared to the previous year, a shocking increase of 140% was recorded. In March 2022, the Kingdom executed 81 people in single day in March 2022. Forty-one of those executed were from Shia minority. The same year, Amnesty called for the Saudi authorities to halt the impending execution of two Bahraini Shia men, Jaafar Sultan and Sadeq Thamer, who were sentenced to death in October 2021. The sentence was based on terrorism and protest-related charges, following a deeply flawed trial based on torture-tainted confessions. They were held incommunicado in solitary confinement and had no access to legal representation throughout their pre-trial detention.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: The "Associated Press" reports that, in 2017, the Saudi government "razed homes belonging to Shia residents" in a several-hundred years old area in al-Awamiyah. Saudi officials said that the area provided a haven for militant groups and stated that it would redevelop the area in which it razed homes. "The Independent" reports that a three-year-old and a two-year-old were killed by gunfire resulting from violence between government forces and armed anti-government protestors. The clashes began in May 2017, By August, locals had reported that between one- and two-dozen people had been killed in the shelling of the city and by sniper fire in what "The Independent" described as a "siege". According to an estimate provided by residents of the city, 20,000 residents were fled the city in response to the violence.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: According to Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch in 2009, "Saudi judges have harshly punished confessed 'witches' for what at worst appears to be fraud, but may well be harmless acts." In 2009, the Saudi "religious police" established a special "Anti-Witchcraft Unit" to educate the public, investigate and combat witchcraft.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Among the people executed in Saudi for magic and sorcery, and often other charges, are Egyptian pharmacist Mustafa Ibrahim (beheaded in 2007 in Riyadh), Muree bin Ali bin Issa al-Asiri (found in possession of talismans and executed in Najran province in June 2012), Amina bin Salem Nasser (executed in December 2011 in Jawf), and Abdul Hamid Bin Hussain Bin Moustafa al-Fakki (a Sudanese migrant worker executed in a car park in Medina on 20 September 2011). Ali Hussain Sibat, a Lebanese host of a popular fortune-telling TV program, was arrested while in Saudi in May 2008 on Umrah and sentenced to death but finally released sometime in 2011 or 2012.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Many convicted of magic receive lesser punishments of lashes and/or prison. In 2011, the "Anti-Witchcraft Unit" processed over 586 cases of magical crime. In 2012 there were 215 witchcraft arrests made. The majority of these offenders are foreign domestic workers from Africa and Indonesia. Foreign domestic workers who bring unfamiliar traditional religious or folk customs are a disproportionately affected by the anti-witchcraft campaign according to Human Rights Watch researchers Adam Coogle and Cristoph Wilcke. Saudis assume folk practices are "some kind of sorcery or witchcraft", and widespread belief in witchcraft means it can be invoked as a defense in Sharia courts against workers complaining of mistreatment by Saudi employers. Human Rights Watch believes that the conviction of a Syrian national, 'Abd al-Karim Mara'I al-Naqshabandi, who was executed in 1996 for undertaking "the practice of works of magic and spells and possession of a collection of polytheistic and superstitious books, was actually resulted from a dispute with his employer Prince Salman bin Sa'ud bin 'Abd al'Aziz, a nephew of King Fahd.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: According to Human Rights Watch, Saudi Arabia continued to repress pro-reform activists and peaceful dissidents in 2017.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Speech, the press and other forms of communicative media, including television and radio broadcasting and Internet reception, are actively censored by the government to prevent political dissent and anything deemed, by the government, to be offensive to Wahhabi culture or Islamic morality.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 2008, a prominent Saudi blogger and reformist, Fouad al-Farhan, was jailed for posting comments online that were critical of Saudi business, religious and media figures, signifying a move by the government to step up its censorship of the Internet within its borders. He was released on 26 April 2008.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Online social media has increasingly come under government scrutiny for dealing with the "forbidden" topics. In 2010 a Saudi man was fined and given jail time for his sexually suggestive YouTube video production. That same year another man was also jailed and ordered to pay a fine for boasting about his sex life on television.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: "D+Z", a magazine focused on development, reports that hundreds were arrested in order to limit freedom of expression. Many of these individuals were held without trial and in secret. The torture of these prisoners was also found to be prevalent.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 17 December 2012, blogger Raif Badawi was charged with apostasy, which carries the death penalty. Badawi is the editor and of co-founder of Free Saudi Liberals, a website for religious discussion. The organization Human Rights Watch has called for charges against him to be dropped. He had been sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes for "insulting Islam", but this sentence was changed to 1,000 lashes, 10 years in prison, and additionally a fine of 1,000,000 Saudi riyals. The lashes are due to be administered every Friday for 20 weeks, 50 lashes at a time, but have not continued past the first flogging. The second flogging has been postponed more than twelve times; previous postponements were due to health reasons, but the reason behind the most recent postponement is unknown.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Saudi novelist and political analyst Turki al-Hamad was arrested 24 December 2012 after a series of tweets on religion and other topics. The arrest was ordered by Saudi Interior Minister Prince Muhammad bin Nayef; however the charges against al-Hamad were not announced. He has since been freed.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 2014 and 2015, a team of Saudi agents allegedly infiltrated Twitter and stole proprietary and sensitive personal data from the American social media platform, in order to unmask anonymous dissidents of Saudi Arabia.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In July 2015, Waleed Abulkhair, a prominent human rights lawyer, founder of Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia and recipient of 2012 of the Palm prize for human rights, was sentenced to 15 years of prison by a special criminal court in Riyadh for vague offences such as "setting up an unlicensed organization".


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 17 November 2015, Ashraf Fayadh, a Palestinian poet and contemporary artist, was sentenced to death for committing apostasy. Fayadh was detained by the country's religious police in 2013 in Abha, in southwest Saudi Arabia, and then rearrested and tried in early 2014. He was accused of having promoted atheism in his 2008 book of poems "Instructions Within". However, the religious police failed to prove that his poetry was atheist propaganda and Fayadh's supporters believe he is being punished by hardliners for posting a video online showing a man being lashed in public by the religious police in Abha. Adam Coogle, a Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch, said Fayadh's death sentence showed Saudi Arabia's "complete intolerance of anyone who may not share government-mandated religious, political and social views".


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 15 July 2015, Saudi Arabian writer and commentator Zuhair Kutbi was sentenced to four years in prison without clear charges following an interview at the Rotana Khaleejia TV channel in which he discussed his ideas for peaceful reform in Saudi Arabia to become a constitutional monarchy, and talked about combatting religious and political repression. Kutbi's lawyer and son said half the sentence was suspended, but that he was also banned from writing for 15 years and travelling abroad for five, and fined US$26,600.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: February 2017, Human Rights Watch issued a report regarding the violation of freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia. According to the report, since 2010, at least 20 prominent Saudi dissidents were sentenced to a long prison term or a travel ban for some years; the offenses ranged from breaking allegiance with the ruling family to participating in protests demanding rights be respected. According to the report, the government has been trying to silence people expressing dissenting views regarding religion, politics, and human rights. On 17 April 2011, Nadhir al-Majed, a prominent 39-year-old writer, was arrested at school and detained for 15 months. On 18 January 2017, he was sentenced to seven years in prison and a seven-year travel ban; he has also not been permitted to call his family or receive visits. The conviction was based on "his participation in protests in 2011 over discrimination against Shia" and "his communication with international media and human rights organizations", supporting the right of Shia in the country. On 10 January, Abdulaziz al-Shubaily, a human rights activist, was re-sentenced to eight years in prison, an eight-year ban on using social media after his release and an eight-year travel ban; the charges included "his incitement against the government and judiciary" as well as "his communication with international agencies against his government". He remains free on bail, however. On 8 January, Essam Koshak, 45, was detained without charge; he used social medial to highlight Saudi Arabia's repression of dissident writers, activists, and advocates for their release. Since 2014, nearly all Saudi dissidents have been sentenced to a long jail term based on their activism in addition to arrest of all the activists associated with the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, which was dissolved in March 2013.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In September 2018, the Right Livelihood Award awarded three jailed Saudi human rights activists with the "alternative Nobel prize" award. Abdullah al-Hamid, Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani and Waleed Abu al-Khair were jointly awarded one million kronor cash award "for their visionary and courageous efforts, guided by universal human rights principles, to reform the totalitarian political system in Saudi Arabia". , al-Hamid and al-Qahtani, founding members of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, were serving prison sentences of 11 and 10 years respectively, according to the charges for "providing inaccurate information to foreign media, founding and operating an unlicensed human rights organization"; while al-Khair, a lawyer and activist, was serving a sentence of 15 years for "disobeying the ruler".


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In 2018, a Saudi American journalist, Jamal Khashoggi was murdered inside a foreign embassy. He was a critic of Saudi Arabia. In June 2019, a 101-page report by the OHCHR accused the kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the premeditated assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. The same year, British media group, The Guardian, claimed that it was being targeted by a cybersecurity unit in Saudi Arabia. The unit was directed to hack into the email accounts of the journalists probing into the various crises involving the royal court. The claim was made based on what is said to be a confidential internal order, signed in the name of Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide of the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman also named in the murder of Khashoggi.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 1 February 2020, Abdulrahman Almutairi, a Saudi dissident, was given asylum in Los Angeles after he claimed that the Saudi kingdom attempted to kidnap him from the US, as a result of his criticism of the crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In March 2020, "The Guardian" revealed that Saudi Arabia had been allegedly spying its citizens in the US. The British media cited that the nation has been readily exploiting the weakness in global mobile telecom network called SS7, and informed that the data reviewed by them shows millions of covert tracking requests for the US location of Saudi-registered phones since November 2019.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 9 April 2020, prominent human rights activist Abdullah al-Hamid died in the prison after suffering a stroke. He was the founder of Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association and was arrested in 2013 for a peaceful protest.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: On 8 June 2020, the Human Rights Watch documented that Saudi authorities have arbitrarily detained a Yemeni blogger and human rights activist, Mohamad al-Bokari, being held in al-Malaz prison in Riyadh. He was arrested on 8 April 2020, for posting a video on social media and calling for equal human rights in Saudi Arabia. The organization has called for his immediate release and documented his arrest as a threat to freedom of expression in the Kingdom.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In June 2021, a 31-years-old Sudanese media personality and journalist, Ahmad Ali Abdelkader, was sentenced to four years in prison by a Saudi court for expressing support for Sudan's 2018-19 revolution on Twitter and criticising Saudi Arabia's actions in Sudan and Yemen. Human Rights Watch Deputy Middle East Director Michael Page said, "This and other similar prosecutions demonstrate just how determined Saudi authorities are to stamp out even the most minor criticism or questioning on social media and deter all dissent under threat of long prison sentences."


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In January 2021, Salma al-Shehab, a Saudi student at Leeds University, was arrested while visiting Saudi Arabia for holidays. In August 2022, she was given 34-year prison sentence for following and retweeting dissidents and activists on Twitter. Some of her tweets appeared to show support for Loujain al-Hathloul, a Saudi women's rights activist who was imprisoned by Saudi Arabia earlier and was tortured. Later in August 2022, a woman named Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani was sentenced to 45 years in prison for "using the internet to tear [Saudi Arabia's] social fabric". Democracy for the Arab World Now connected these harsh prison sentences with US president Joe Biden's visit to Jeddah in July 2022.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: Towards nearing the end of September 2022, Amnesty International closed its “#LetThemFly” petition that received the support of approximately 100,000 people from around the world who called on Saudi authorities to lift travel bans imposed on activists. The Saudi activists in question have long been subjected to travel ban for merely exercising their freedom of expression peacefully. The petition “#Let Them Fly” started in May 2022 and since then Amnesty was mobilizing activists around the world to take action.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: About 1,200 people fled Saudi Arabia and sought asylum in other countries in 2017, including many women fleeing forced marriages or abusive male family members. The Saudi government has frozen bank accounts, arrested family members, and revoked official documents in an attempt to get fleeing citizens to return to the country or to a Saudi embassy. Students studying abroad have been threatened with termination of scholarships in response to criticism of the Saudi government on social media. In 2018, some studying in Canada were de-funded after the Canadian government criticized human rights in Saudi Arabia. Women who have successfully gained asylum in Western countries report fearing for their personal safety after being harassed by Saudi government agents on social media, and sometimes in person, warning them that they will be sorry for their actions or be punished. Occasionally they are asked to go to Saudi embassies for no stated reason. One woman, unlike most, reported going to the embassy to try to end harassment of a firm she had left to her business partners, but she said authorities attempted to get her to return, threatened her, and said the business would continue to have problems as long as she remained in Germany.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: The Saudi government is suspected of being behind the disappearance of its critic Naser al-Sa'id from Lebanon in 1979. Human rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul was forcibly repatriated from the United Arab Emirates in 2017, jailed for a short time, banned from future international travel, and then disappeared after being arrested again in 2018. Her husband was forcibly repatriated from Jordan. In 2016, three women and seven children who fled to Lebanon were arrested by Lebanese police and returned to Saudi Arabia minutes after using a bank card.


title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia

text: In April 2017, 24-year-old Dina Ali attempted to flee from Saudi Arabia to Australia via the Philippines to escape a forced marriage. Despite her pleas for international assistance over social media, airport personnel in the Philippines blocked her from boarding her flight to Sydney, and handed her over to Saudi authorities. She was duct taped and forcibly repatriated to Saudi Arabia, where she feared her family would kill her.