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Saudi Arabia has abolished the flogging of its criminal justice system, a penalty widely criticized by international human rights NGOs, a pro-government official and media reported.
The ultra-conservative kingdom is regularly accused of human rights violations by NGOs that denounce, among other things, the punishment of flogging applicable in the case of murder, violation of “public order” or even extramarital affairs.
“The Human Rights Commission welcomes the recent Supreme Court decision to eliminate flogging as a possible punishment,” Awad Al-Awad, chairman of this commission, a government agency, said in a statement Friday night. .
“Under this decision, previous flogging sentences will be replaced with prison terms and fines,” he added. “This reform is a significant advance” in the area of human rights, he said.
The exact date of the decision to abolish the flogging was not specified.
It was not made public, but was reported by several local media outlets, including the government newspaper Okaz, which he cited “important sources.”
According to Okaz, the Supreme Court ruled that the courts cannot apply the punishment for flogging “in any case”, and must choose “other penalties”, such as imprisonment or fines.
Since Mohammed bin Salman became crown prince in 2017, Saudi Arabia has come under fire from human rights organizations.
The economic and social opening promoted by the prince was accompanied by an increase in repression against dissident voices, within the royal family, as well as among intellectuals and activists.
His image as a reformer was clouded by the murder of the journalist and critic of the Saudi government Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated at his country’s consulate in Istanbul in 2018. A crime that caused international protests.
On Friday, NGOs announced the death of a stroke in a prison in Saudi Arabia by a prominent Saudi human rights activist, Abdallah al-Hamid, who was serving an 11-year sentence for “breaking allegiance to the king”, “incitement “to disorder” and for trying to destabilize state security.
The case of the Saudi blogger Raif Badawi was the most emblematic in recent years. A defender of freedom of expression, he was sentenced in 2014 to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for “insulting” Islam.
In addition to the tabs, NGOs denounce the massive use of the death penalty in Saudi Arabia.
“Saudi Arabia executed a record number of people in 2019, despite the general decline in executions worldwide,” Amnesty lamented in its report on the death penalty worldwide, released this week.
“Saudi officials killed 184 people last year, the highest number Amnesty has recorded in a single year in the country,” he said.
