page_title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia
section_title: Freedom of press and communication
hierarchical_section_title: Human rights in Saudi Arabia / Freedom of press and communication
caption_attribution_description: English: Abdullah al-Hamid after the ninth hearing session. العربية: عبد الله الحامد بعد جلسة الاستماع التاسعة.
context_page_description: Human rights in Saudi Arabia are a topic of concern. The Saudi government, which enforces sharia law under the absolute rule of the House of Saud, have been accused of and denounced by various international organizations and governments for violating multiple human rights within the country. The totalitarian 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. 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.
context_section_description: According to Human Rights Watch in 2017 Saudi Arabia continued to repress pro-reform activists and peaceful dissidents.
  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.
  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 April 26, 2008.
  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.
  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.
  On December 17, 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.
  Saudi novelist and political analyst Turki al-Hamad was arrested December 24, 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.
  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."
  On November 17, 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".
  On July 15, 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.
  February 2017, Human Rights Watch i
caption: Abdullah al-Hamid has been imprisoned seven times for supporting the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in Saudi Arabia. He has been serving an 11-year jail sentence since 2013.
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