Amnesty International document. Thomas Wakley. Well, in Saudi Arabia, the punishment for fornication, however, is 100 lashes. Dont worry. They stayed quite still and didnt ask any questions. They often undertook a sort of training to learn how to flog, using a tree trunk as a body. Ensaf Haidar believes a YouTube video shows her husband receiving a public flogging for "insulting Islam." Sentenced to 40 lashes for wearing a miniskirt in the privacy of a friend's home in Iran, Tala Raassi describes the punishment that changed her life. Its important that we think together about how to ensure that your children dont suffer any harm from this. Drinking alcohol is a criminal offense, and drug trafficking often a capital crime. Youve got to tell them whats happened.. I simply couldnt imagine the authorities going ahead with it. Discovery Company. Camera catches mailman stealing . According to reports, the lady who is assumed to be in her late twenties was caught seriously been chopped by a Sudanese who lives in the same house with her. There was nothing I could do about it. At least in Saudi cities, it is much more common to see women socializing openly with men and not covering their hair or faces than it was a few years ago. In a May 2008 opinion column in Arab News, it was claimed that lashes were now being given out by traffic police, presumably meaning "on the spot" and without a court sentence. US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices for 2001 This happens "sometimes". Hundreds of lashes could previously. The Saudi authorities arrested Mr. Badawi in 2012 and put him on trial on charges that included cybercrime and disobeying his father. A recent case in Saudi Arabia that has been covered around the world concerns the blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for subversion. He didnt level any accusations at me. Hamid was a founding member of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA) and was sentenced to 11 years in jail in March 2013, campaigners said. Several press reports of notable JCP cases during 2005 are summarised, all of them already covered by me in The Archive. Most of the floggings were suspended, but he eventually suffered 50 lashes before hundreds of spectators in the city of Jiddah in 2015. These were divided into instalments: when the skin had started to heal it was time to whip again. And, as is common in the Arab world, the prisoner keeps all his clothes on. One of them had been sentenced to lashes, which were never inflicted. It all looks decidedly informal and ad hoc and arbitrary, but then the whole Saudi system is very ad hoc and arbitrary. Neither of them checked the soldiers pulse. In the above video, IBTimes UK explains five of the most barbaric punishments you can receive in Saudi Arabia. However, some observers, notably Amnesty International (see external links below), reject these claims as mere propaganda by the regime; they say this Koranic rule is by no means always followed, and suggest that the floggings, at least in some cases, do in fact cause injury to the recipient. Current trending video on the Ghanaian internet community which has raised eyebrows and additionally been labelled as barbaric by a section of social media users is footage captured during a whipping session on a Ghanaian lady who was caught in bed with another man in Saudi Arabia. Ohio band member and family killed in murder-suicide, police say, Police: Mayor of College Park, Maryland, arrested for child pornography, 5 Best Destinations for a Family Safari in Africa, Trade in Your Fitbit: A Smart and Sustainable Way to Upgrade Your Tech, The Reason Why Banks and Other Businesses Require so Many Details. 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The most high-profile instance of flogging in recent years was the case of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, who was arrested in 2012 and sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes and then . Then you have the experience of the floggers. Oh, great! said Dodi, who is very fond of the creatures. In 19th century Britain, the case of a young soldier who died after a similar assault provoked a national outcry. Whites body was just about to be buried when the coroner for Middlesex decided to hold a judicial inquiry. I suppose you thought to punish me for not writing, said Private Frederick John White in a letter to his brother on 25 June 1846. There have been several other reported and unreported convictions of journalists and activists in Saudi Arabia who have attempted to voice their concerns on Islam or the Saudi culture. 1994: Unwelcome "guests": The plight of Iraqi refugees He looked thin. When would they lead him in front of the mosque in handcuffs? In the past, they were often carried out in public, adding a social stigma to the physical pain inflicted. The kingdoms most famous flogging case was that of Raif Badawi, who ran a website that published material criticizing Saudi religious figures, lauding Western legal systems and arguing that atheists should be free to state their views without being punished. Raif, I said, the whole world is talking about your fate. I took a deep breath. He was awarded the European parliament's Sakharov human rights prize the following year. In very quick succession he took the blows all over the back of his body: he was lashed from shoulders to calves, while the men around him clapped and uttered pious phrases. Theyre your children after all.. The report for 2000 adds that 5 persons were sentenced to 2,600 lashes, and 4 persons to 2,400 lashes, for "deviant sexual behavior". But now hes better again. My children reacted very strangely to this new revelation. It is certainly clear in one of the two available photographs (see above) that the operative is raising his caning arm high and has no book under it. Said Boumedouha, Deputy Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme said: "The world's spotlight is shining on Saudi Arabia. Punishment for drinking, possessing or trading alcohol is severe in the kingdom. A very conservative version of Koranic law is in force in this exceptionally backward, corrupt and repressive country, a ruthless totalitarian dictatorship run by an absolute monarchy. As soon as she had set off with them, I checked my Facebook page. Something bad happened this weekend. Is it about Dad again? Dodi asked suspiciously. Tennessee becomes first state to outlaw drag shows on public grounds, near schools. As one would expect when there are so many of them, the strokes are not particularly hard. Right hands have been cut off at the wrist as punishment for theft in Saudi Arabia. In 1998 judicial floggings continued to be imposed "routinely". Is that why we arent allowed on the internet? How is he? Najwa already surprised that her father hadnt phoned over the weekend as he usually did asked anxiously. The HRW spokesperson adds that the accused is "shackled" during the punishment, and is "sometimes" permitted to wear a single layer of clothing; I had had the impression that that was always so. Copyright 2014 - 2023. Floggings tended to be done with a wooden cane, the swift blows going up and down the backside of the sentenced person. The document casts doubt on past claims that these are relatively lightly administered and meant as a symbolic humiliation rather than as serious pain. This is not the first time that Saudi Arabia has come under scrutiny for its human rights record, with the country being criticised by groups such as Amnesty International for both its number of executions and freely administered torture practices. Raif Badawi's family have warned he could die if the 1,000 lashes are carried out. On 23 March this year, an Islamic court there ordered two women to receive 180 lashes for alleged adultery. Report of the Special Rapporteur Committing adultery can lead to death by stoning. 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On 7 January 2015, two masked men stormed the editorial offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and shot 11 journalists. The coroner was Thomas Wakley, a surgeon, medical journalist, and also the Lancets founder and an ardent anti-flogging campaigner. Copyright Ensaf Haidar, Andrea C. Hoffmann. UN Human Rights Commission: 1997: Thematic Reports All Rights Reserved. The prisoner in this case is allegedly a sex offender, though there is no way of verifying that. US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices for 2000 after they tried to take back property that ISIS fighters had stolen from their homes Women flogged thirty times. Criticism of Saudi Arabia's human rights record has grown since King Salman named his son Mohammed crown prince and heir to the throne in June 2017. US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices for 1997 According to unconfirmed reports those condemned to die this way are given tranquilisers, before being taken to a public square after midday prayers. One of the most high-profile cases internationally, it began when Badawi was arrested for. All Rights Reserved. "Flogging and other forms of corporal judicial punishment violate the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment. 1.8k. Even when a cane is used, the punishment is normally referred to as "flogging" rather than "caning"; and the lashes (rarely "strokes") are reportedly not (or anyway not usually) inflicted with the full strength of the operator, as they are required to be in countries with a British judicial caning tradition such as Singapore and Malaysia, with their maximum of 24 strokes at any one infliction; indeed, if Saudi-style sentences of hundreds of lashes were inflicted in the Singapore manner, the prisoner would surely not survive. Copyright 2023 IBTimes UK. All rights reserved. 02:28 - Source: CNN. We will ask them not to talk to your children explicitly about the subject when they come back. The following 40-second video clip was filmed surreptitiously on a mobile telephone. In April, a Yemeni blogger living in Saudi Arabia was arrested for advocating for equality for LGBT people. A circular issued by the Ministry of Justice and sent to the courts of the kingdom reports an abolition demanded for years by human rights organizations, which, however, harbors a small print: lashes will continue to be applied in crimes such as adultery, attack on . Amnesty International document. No one in our house ever talked about the subject again. Thanks to Saudi Arabias brutal and inhumane treatment of blogger Raif Badawi, flogging as a punishment is back in the news. Local courts routinely order floggings, often of hundreds of lashes -- or even thousands, inflicted in instalments. Your effort and contribution in providing this feedback is much Soon it will be all over the net. Theres also supposed to be a video, she warned me. Saudi Arabia The first 50 lashes: a Saudi activist's wife endures her husband's brutal sentence After Saudi blogger Raif Badawi was arrested and sentenced to prison and 1,000 lashes,. It is the extreme rapidity of the strokes -- about four per second -- which is perhaps most surprising, and which makes this seem quite a different kind of thing from the formal and ceremonial manner in which JCP has typically been conducted in the British world (Malaysia, Pakistan, etc. On Sunday evening, however, the subject was still in the headlines, and I wondered whether I would even be able to send the children to school the next day. I woke them up at half past seven on the dot, as always. If (as seems probable) the nurses did not actually do the crime, the question of punishment is irrelevant. Badawi received his first 50 lashes in January, but subsequent floggings have been postponed. Sign up and stay up to date with our daily newsletter. Anyone can read what you share. The USSD has now decided to refer to all Saudi JCP as "lashing" and makes no reference to different implements. Caught on camera 16 videos. Never before seen Amazon tribe filmed by drone, Camera catches mailman stealing family's tomatoes, Video shows self-driving Uber hit pedestrian, Racist chants caught on camera at university, Policemen catch child falling from balcony, Camera captures kangaroo collide with cyclist, Surveillance shows Turpin siblings' escape, Million-dollar jewel heist caught on camera, See terrifying boat crash caught on video. If you are travelling to SA, you have to avoid drinking alcohol. His punishment began last week outside al-Jafali mosque in Jeddah after the Friday prayers. Saudi blogger receives first 50 of 1,000 lashes. On 2 April, an Asian housemaid was. There are highly selective quotes from various naive letters to British newspapers upholding tough sentences. Well say: Wed like you to meet them quite normally. Hes fine, I lied. punishment." Saudi Arabia has sentenced people convicted of homosexuality and "sodomy" to a range of penalties including corporal It currently remains a legal punishment in several countries and regions, all of which have sharia-based criminal laws.Gay people also face extrajudicial killings by state and non-state actors, as in Chechnya in 2019, though it is denied by the Chechen authorities and . Believe me, I would rather have spared them all that too., This time Raifs reaction was very understanding. While he remains in prison, he has been embraced by some in the West as symbol of the kingdoms intolerance of freedom of thought and expression. US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices for 2004 ), where a very specific number of strokes is delivered slowly and carefully. A reader of the Times wrote to the editor that had the regimental doctor put his fingers on Whites wrist he would have found that at each lash his pulse faltered. Or Stop this inhuman regime. Many also drew parallels with the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices: Both are acts of violence aimed at gagging journalists. And there were many other comments of that kind. Public floggings have grown rare in recent years, either because the punishment was being administered in prisons or not at all. "Raif called me. The principal had already assembled a council of teachers, a social worker and the school psychologist. The jurys verdict, given on 4 August 1846, was that Frederick John White died from the mortal effects of the flogging that he had received at Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow. Flogging sentences are normally combined with imprisonment. 00:46. Local courts routinely order floggings, often of hundreds of lashes -- or even thousands, inflicted in instalments. June 2001 article in The Guardian (London), largely recycling information from Amnesty reports, including a first-person account of being flogged. But Ensaf, he said soothingly. Dermatologist Erasmus Wilson was called by Wakley to perform a third autopsy on the body of White. According to the British nonprofit, which campaigns against the death penalty, the rate of execution in Saudi Arabia has doubled since 2015, when King Salman succeeded to the throneafter the death of his half-brother, King Abdullah. This is the shocking moment a Saudi Arabian blogger sentenced to 1,000 lashes for 'insulting Islam' was publicly flogged in front of hundreds of 'cheering' crowds. Speaking from Canada, his wife Ensaf Haidar told . I couldnt see his face. I called my friend Mireille. At all events, this punishment is being inflicted by officials in uniform, who are presumably police or judicial officers of some sort. Someone filmed Raifs lashes on their phone.. Its a scandal, they wrote. In 2003, a court sentenced Indian migrant worker Puthan Veettil 'Abd ul-Latif Noushad to be punished by having his right eye gouged out in retribution for his role in a brawl in which a Saudi citizen was injured. A Warner Bros. Saudi Arabia's human rights record is once again in the headlines after news that a British pensioner living in the country will be publicly flogged for possessing alcohol. Cites several whipping cases, with some detail of how particular floggings were carried out. States that at least 27 individuals were sentenced to flogging in 1996. While stoning as a punishment for adultery and the amputation of limbs for theft remain technically on the books, they are rarely, if ever, carried out. Saudi Arabia was recently condemned for sentencing liberal blogger Raif Badawi to 1,000 lashes for "insulting Islam through electronic channels". That angered Saudi conservatives, who denounced him. Crime and punishment in Saudi Arabia: Lashing, imprisonment, and other unusual punishments About one-half of all rulings examined in the current study were presided over by a lone judge. With trembling hands I clicked on the video to set it in motion. The video was purportedly taken inside Briman prison in Jeddah, where . No. Raif clearly had something else on his mind. Image: WikiCommons. Yes, said Mireille. 1,000 lashes and a fine of 5,000 Saudi Arabian riyals (approx US$1,000). See paragraphs 24 and 29-31 for the Saudi official response to accusations that judicial flogging constitutes torture. Saudi blogger Raif Badawi - jailed and sentenced to 1,000 lashes for "insulting Islam online" - has been freed, his wife says. Death sentences are almost exclusively based on the system of judicial sentencing discretion (), following the classical principle of avoiding Sharia-prescribed penalties when possible.In recent decades, the government and the courts have increasingly issued these sentences, reacting to a rise in violent crime during the 1970s. Paragraphs 587 to 589 of this 1995 UN document refer to various Saudi flogging cases. OK? OK, I replied. Since then our little flat in Sherbrooke has turned into a campaign office for Raifs liberation. According to reports, the lady who is assumed to be in her late twenties was caught seriously been chopped by a Sudanese who lives in the same house with her. Sighting from the video, the lady who had landed herself into this dire trouble had received over 70 lashes . Discovery Company. @HRHPSalman, Amnesty New Zealand (@AmnestyNZ) January 15, 2015, Today front of Saudi embassy in Germany Berlin, Amnesty stand for #RaifBadawi pic.twitter.com/Os850JtRyX, (@raif_badawi) January 15, 2015, today front of Saudi embassy in Paris for #RaifBadawi pic.twitter.com/ISc0l6ahiu (@raif_badawi) January 15, 2015. I told the children that we were going to have a few media-free days because they were watching too much television and spending too much time on the internet. The children took that time: they fell ill. All three complained of stomach pains and nausea. Men are buried up to their waists and women up to their breasts, with the stones used deliberately small enough to not kill the condemned in just a couple of strikes. The violence of the blows almost made me suspect as much. The Saudi Media Debates Flogging by the Saudi Religious Police Badawai will continue to be flogged for the next 19 weeks unless a prison doctor finds him in poor health to continue. How was Raif now, I wondered. Reportedly, those flogged do not receive medical treatment. After the first 50 lashes and the international public outcry that followed the men with the whips in Riyadh did not at first dare to repeat the punishment. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Badawi's feet and hands were shackled during the flogging but his face was visible. Travelers show off decked out RV and tours the world full time. A 2015 demonstration in Paris in support of Raif Badawi. He was due to receive the lashes over 20 weeks and was given the first set of 50 on 9 January. On Wednesday, Prince of Saudi Arabia's ruling Al Saud family was given lashes in a prison in Jeddah as a part of court-ordered punishment, as reported by Saudi newspaper. Everythings great, but the prison warders are very bad people. Flogging in the military, navy, schools and private homes was a common disciplinary measure in the nineteenth century. As a result, the Martial Court had sentenced White to 150 lashes. He is being held up (somewhat incompetently) against the back of a police van and punished with what is either a somewhat rigid whip or an extremely flexible long cane. Raifs face smiles from the banner over our sofa, while we get together to make posters for the next demonstration. Men 'Behaving Like Women' Face Flogging But worst of all was the feeling of helplessness. I nervously fumbled a cigarette from the pack in front of me. Amnesty International Report 1997 Ensaf Haidar, wife of Saudi blogger and human rights activist Raif Badawi. When would the prison warders wake him? In the above video, IBTimes UK explains five of the most barbaric punishments you can receive in Saudi Arabia. This implies that the Saudi authorities draw a distinction between "moral" offences to do with sex or alcohol, punished by caning, and political or religious crimes, punished by flogging with a leather strap.