Safa Al Ahmad is a Saudi journalist and documentary maker who has spent the last three years covertly filming an unreported mass uprising in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.
Her 30-minute documentary, Saudi’s Secret Uprising, was broadcast by the BBC in May 2014, and has drawn widespread attention to the violent and bloody protests.
Al Ahmad took enormous risks in her regular filming trips to the Eastern Province. First, as a woman travelling alone, she drew the attention of Saudi officials, who operate in a country in which women have limited control over their day-to-day lives. Second, she carried a camera full of footage of dissenting activists. Saudi Arabia is ranked by Freedom House as one of the most restrictive Arab countries in terms of free expression – Al Ahmad would almost certainly have faced severe punishment if caught filming.
She also directed Al Qaeda in Yemen: A new front in 2012, documenting one of the militant group’s principal strongholds; she is currently editing her second Yemen documentary. Her article about the restrictive treatment of women in Saudi Arabia compared to neighbouring Arab countries, Wishful Thinking, was featured in the PEN award-winning book Diaries of an Unfinished Revolution.
Al Ahmad’s film work was done in Qatif, an urban area home to the world’s biggest oil field. But the dilapidated area has seen little of the vast wealth provided by these natural reserves. Qatif is the centre of Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia, who make up less than 15 per cent of the country’s population. Residents believe that they are subject to sectarian discrimination by the Sunni monarchy.
Impoverished and blocked from celebrating Shia religious festivals by authorities, people from across the Eastern Province began peacefully demonstrating in March 2011. Buoyed by the ongoing Arab Spring, the protests for improved civil rights quickly gained traction, becoming the biggest series of political demonstrations ever witnessed in Saudi Arabia.
But faced with a government which refused to meaningfully engage with protesters or recognise the demonstrations as a serious issue, activists soon turned violent. Stones and molotov cocktails were thrown at police forces, and handguns were increasingly used. In the subsequent two years of conflict, 20 activists and two policemen were killed, and hundreds of people were detained for months at a time without trial.
Al Ahmad single-handedly broke the media blackout on the protests holding sway both inside and outside the country, where the image of Saudi Arabia as a relatively stable region has dominated. She travelled into the heart of the violence and searched, sometimes for months, for protesters willing to speak to her. She interviewed activists on the government’s most wanted list, who would later be killed or imprisoned. Eventually, she gained the activists’ trust to the point that she was given dozens of hours of footage of the violent protests.
Extensive and violent online abuse has been directed at Al Ahmad by Saudi government supporters. They regard the documentary as sectarian propaganda, even though the documentary ends by showing the destructive belligerence of many protesters.
She has sparked a row between the BBC and the Saudi government, who contacted the broadcaster to express their displeasure at the documentary’s characterisation of events. She has been informally advised not to return to the country, where her family live.
Made in Britain? Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) called for the immediate suspension of the use of excessive, indiscriminate and systematic use of tear gas against civilian protesters and densely populated Shia neighbourhoods in Bahrain (Image: Iman Redha/Demotix)
The Arab Spring has not stopped Britain from helping crush free expression and freedom of assembly by selling crowd control gear to authoritarian states including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Analysis of newly-published data on export licences approved by the UK government have revealed ministers backed over £4 million of tear gas, crowd control ammunition and CS hand grenade sales over the last two years to Saudi Arabia – one of the most repressive states in the world.
The British government also allowed crowd control ammunition to be sold to Malaysia and Oman, as well as tear gas to Hong Kong and Thailand.
It gave the green light to anti-riot and ballistic shields to four authoritarian regimes listed by the Economist Democratic Index: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Azerbaijan, as well as Saudi Arabia.
Its only refusal for an export licence in 2013 for equipment which could be used to suppress internal dissent was for an order of CS hand grenades and ‘tear gas/irritant ammunition’ to Turkey.
A lack of transparency across the secretive arms sector makes it difficult to establish which companies are providing the arms – or how the country in question intends to use them.
But the Geneva Convention forbids the military use of all gas weapons, meaning the UK government would have assumed the tear gas was for use against civilian protesters.
Brief explanatory notes included in the export licences data suggest all those mentioned above are primarily for use against domestic populations.
The notes typically state the licence is granted “for armed forces end use” or “for testing and evaluation by a government / military end user”.
The only exception is the note for a sizeable order of anti-protest equipment for Brazil, which makes clear the export licence is granted for “armed forces end users not involved in crowd control / public security”.
Further evidence has emerged that Britain’s leading arms firm, BAE, has signed a £360 million contract with an unnamed Middle Eastern country for the upgrade of armoured personnel carriers whose primary use is against protesters.
Industry insiders believe the improvements are being made in Saudi Arabia to a stockpile of the vehicles left in the country by the United States military.
BAE’s chairman Sir Roger Carr said contractual commitments prevented him from commenting at the defence giant’s annual general meeting in Farnborough yesterday.
He faced heckling and hissing from vocal critics in the audience who had infiltrated the two-hour question-and-answer session, but insisted BAE was “helping to preserve world peace” and that the company “are not undermining the broader international rules” of the arms trade.
Speaking afterwards, however, a member of BAE’s board suggested the “natural place for these decisions is with government” rather than the company.
“I’m not abrogating our moral responsibility,” he said, “but it’s right that the burden of these difficult decisions is on the government because, in the UK at least, this is an elected democracy.”
Britain’s parliament, at least, has proved reluctant to provide a critical voice on the UK’s arms trade.
Opponents had alleged Saudi Arabian troops which intervened to crush the Arab Spring in Bahrain had received British military training. A recent report from MPs accepted the Foreign Office’s rejection of British complicity, with ministers arguing none of the training had taken place “in a repressive way”.
The Commons’ foreign affairs committee did, however, call on the government to “adhere strictly to its existing policy to ensure that defence equipment sold by UK firms are not used for human rights abuses or internal repression”.
Its request for the government to provide further evidence that it is doing so in practice did not meet with a positive response.
Officials said the risk that export licence criteria might be broken is “factored into” the original decision to grant the licence.
The Foreign Office stated: “There are rigorous pre-licence checks and, for open licences, compliance audits at the exporters’ premises in the UK. We will continue to scrutinise carefully all arms sales to Saudi Arabia.”
Many believe the current export licence regime is not fit for purpose, however. In 2013 the UK approved military licences to a total of 31 authoritarian regimes including Russia, China, Qatar and Kuwait.
“BAE couldn’t sell the weapons they do to these countries without the support of the UK government,” Andrew Smith of the Campaign Against The Arms Trade said.
“The UK government can stop any of these exports at any time but is choosing not to because it’s putting arms company profits ahead of human rights.”
He suggested the government’s decision to exclude Bahrain from its list of ‘countries of concern’ on human rights was “politically motivated”.
And he warned arms sales went beyond small-scale arms and ammunition to include much bigger purchases like fighter jets.
“The reason the Saudis buy from Britain is not just because Britain is willing to sell arms,” Smith added, “but also because it comes with political support and the endorsement and silence of the British government.”
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