Saudi arrests drive home message: Change comes from the top

DUBAI: Saudi Arabia this week branded its most iconic women’s rights advocates as ‘ traitors’, sending what analysts and activists say is an unmistakeable message: future change comes only from the throne.

The arrest of at least 10 activists, the majority women, comes one month before the kingdom is slated to lift its driving ban on women.

It was a goal the detainees fought for over generations, but which has been aggressively branded as the fresh approach of the young heir to the throne – Mohammed bin Salman.

The crackdown on Saudi Arabia’s women activists may appear contradictory to the crown prince’s sweeping reforms, but analysts say it fits in line with the enduring top- down vision.

Gerald Feierstein, a former US ambassador to Yemen who also served in Saudi Arabia, says the arrests are ‘unsurprising’.

“While Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has embarked on a broader programme of economic modernisation and social reform, dubbed Vision 2030, he has said explicitly that his programme does not include broadening the political space,” Feierstein said in a Middle East Institute brief.

“In fact, arrests of activists have continued without interruption despite the reform project,” he said, pointing to the continued imprisonment of blogger Raif Badawi.

For Kristian Ulrichsen, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute in the US, the move is meant as a clear reminder of who is in charge.

“At a time when the lifting of the driving ban on Saudi women is fast approaching, the image of prominent women’s rights activists being branded as traitors on the front pages of Saudi newspapers sends a powerful message.”

In the kingdom, the warning “will be very clear to anyone who might be tempted to criticise the government”, Ulrichsen said.

For the Saudi activist community, the arrests confirm the monarchy will resist granting any modicum of democracy, even as it dictates the easing of some social restrictions. — AFP