Comment by grej | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grej | Hacker News Reader

I'll just copy paste a few things out of this article, regarding your state that is the brand new head of the UN Human Rights Council (EDIT: Name was changed from Commission to Council to reflect current nomenclature). Well done, UN:

* "Saudis prefer not to grant visas to unaccompanied women"

* "Nationals of Israel and those with evidence of visiting Israel will be denied visas"

* "Drug possession is punishable by death"

* "LGBT activities are illegal in Saudi Arabia and it is one of the least homosexual friendly countries in the world. First offenses attract prison sentences of several months to life, fines with whipping/flogging, castration, torture, vigilante killings and public execution. A second conviction invariably results in execution."

* "most visitors will be primarily concerned with the code of morality, involving things like women not covering up properly, and not accompanied by a male guardian, not observing prayer or (during Ramadan) fasting times, etc. These rules are enforced by the infamous muttaween - the zealous volunteers of the religious police known as the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. ... Reports of human rights abuses and even deaths in muttaween custody are still common"

* "against the law to be accompanied anywhere by a man who is not your registered male guardian"

* "A woman may not travel alone. They may not stay alone in hotels, hotels will require the presence of a male guardian"

* "Do NOT take pictures of any government-related building (ministries, airports, military facilities etc) or any building that could possibly be one, or you risk being hauled off to jail for espionage, or accused of terrorist plotting"

* "Playing music in public is also prohibited"

* "Converting or attempting to convert Muslims from Islam to other religions is a felony that can be punished with up to death"

* "Any criticism of the King, the royal family or Saudi Arabia's government in general is not tolerated and risks indefinite imprisonment or execution"

Another one of the many horrifying things I saw in the article was the concept of an "Exit Visa" which I hadn't heard of before. I just read up on it a little here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_(document)#Exit_visas

So foreign workers need their employers consent to allow them to to go home. Easy recipe for slavery.

Employers require you to hand them your passport, and you get it back at the end of your work contract.

Not unusual for employers to owe labor several months worth of salary, and then deny knowing them, so workers get deported. A process known as tarheel in Arabic. When a worker decides to quit his or her job, out of desperation, the employer reports them and their visa status is flagged as huroob, it literally means "escapee", or runaway.

Quick exercise: What country worse represents human rights than Saudi Arabia? Their "Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" is seriously 1984-esque.

It really seems like you can be executed for literally anything, and if the government doesn't want to get you, some vigilante could do it with impunity.

To be frank, it's more like 1084. There is no sophisticated surveillance apparatus, because they Hay'a (as it's known) is forbidden from spying on Muslims.

"In addition, the power of the mutawwa'in is limited by the Koran, which frowns upon those who intrude on the privacy of others in order to catch them in sinful acts. The mandate of the Committee on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is specifically to regulate behavior in the public realm. What occurs behind closed doors is between a believer and God."

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/05/the-king...

"LGBT activities are illegal in Saudi Arabia and it is one of the least homosexual friendly countries in the world. First offenses attract prison sentences of several months to life, fines with whipping/flogging, castration, torture, vigilante killings and public execution. A second conviction invariably results in execution."

Wow. Sounds fucking awful there.

Most of us on HN are so incredibly fortunate to live where we do. In the fast paced world, it's often easy to forget that fortune, and the fact that for most of human history, tyranny is the rule, not the exception. That we are shocked by such institutionalized barbarism is both a good thing for how far the world has come, and a sad thing that such a place still exists.

How the UN could possibly name this place the head of the Human Rights Council is unfathomable. They have lost any moral authority they had left through that action.

There is no UN Human Rights Commission. That was disbanded back in 2006. There is a UN human rights council. The current president of the UN human rights council is a German named Joachim Rücker.

Thanks. Edit made

You still do not have it right. Saudi arabia will not be head of the human rights council. They will be head of one of the panels within the human rights council. Their bid to head the entire human rights council failed.

It is still a very bad idea, of course, but it is important to be correct.

> * "Drug possession is punishable by death"

The same is true in the US by law, but it isn't used in practice.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/04/ec...

You are seeing the country from your own lens. That doesn't make sense. The circumstances that surround this country are very different from they places we live in.

> * "Saudis prefer not to grant visas to unaccompanied women"

Saudi Arabia has managed to be secure for certain conservative reasons. Unaccompanied women create too many opportunities for insecurity and the country's security forces cannot handle this.

> * "Nationals of Israel and those with evidence of visiting Israel will be denied visas"

Israel and Saudi are not exactly on talking terms. Same policies exist in Israel for those who visit muslim countries in the Middle East.

> "LGBT activities are illegal in Saudi Arabia and it is one of the least homosexual friendly countries in the world. First offenses attract prison sentences of several months to life, fines with whipping/flogging, castration, torture, vigilante killings and public execution. A second conviction invariably results in execution."

So was America for a number of years. So was China. And they will continue to be the same way for a very long time. America and China have different reasons for not being this way, and it has absolutely nothing to do with morality or social freedom.

Think of a country's laws as a reaction to the nature of the people. In the western world, there are a different set of laws for crowd control. In Saudi Arabia where illiteracy is high and schooling is decentralized, crowd control takes on a different soul. Consider Iraq and Egypt and Syria, countries that have gone through their own transformations. Dictatorship seems to have returned or is being demanded for the purpose of safety and stability.

>Same policies exist in Israel for those who visit muslim countries in the Middle East.

I find this hard to believe. Do you happen to have a source?

Israel does indeed frequently deny entry based on bigoted reasons[0][1][2], but I've never heard of people being denied because of Muslim country passport stamps.

[0] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/06/191899.htm

[1] https://electronicintifada.net/content/us-states-should-act-...

[2] http://gaza.usvpp.gov/border-crossings.html]

> Saudi Arabia has managed to be secure for certain conservative reasons. Unaccompanied women create too many opportunities for insecurity and the country's security forces cannot handle this.

BS. It's misogynistic crap.

> Israel and Saudi are not exactly on talking terms. Same policies exist in Israel for those who visit muslim countries in the Middle East.

Fine, don't really have a problem with that.

> So was America for a number of years.

It was and is wrong. America has a long way to go. They are still well ahead of Saudi Arabia.

> it has absolutely nothing to do with morality or social freedom.

It exactly does.

Sorry, not going to treat Saudi Arabia as anything other than a backwards theocracy that hates women and violates human rights whenever. Quite frankly, it disgusts me that they are an "ally".

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