At a time when Saudi Arabia invites its citizens and world tourists to the Riyadh season 2022, thousands of men and women are languishing in its jails for political reasons, and subjected to various forms of human rights violations,

including enforced disappearances, secret trials and denial of the right to a defense and communicate with the outside world.

Since 2017, the monarchy has been trying, through its various media outlets, to pretend to bring about social transformation and economic changes under the claim of reducing dependence on oil and building a productive society. However, such bombastic claims coincide with a policy of excessive repression against opinion-holders thrown into jails en masse.

Arrests and abuses in Saudi Arabia are not limited to a specific political group, but rather extend to include all opinion-holders and those behind social demands, no matter how politically neutral, since the Saudi regime sees in any demanding activity or expression of opinion a punishable criminal offence.

In this context, Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC) expresses its solidarity with all victims of arbitrary detention and the politicized judiciary in Saudi Arabia, and calls on the Saudi regime to abandon its policy of repression and abuse and the crackdown on public freedoms. It also calls on international human rights organizations to highlight crimes and violations against opinion-holders in Saudi Arabia and show solidarity with them.

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Issued by:

Women Journalists Without Chains

October 17, 2022