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me: first time I've ever over-dosed a post :)
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On August 11, some 400 inmates at the central prison in al-Jawf went on a two-day rampage. According to an unnamed Saudi security official cited in press reports, the prisoners attacked a guard, burned bedding in their cells, and then rioted, causing extensive damage. Calm was reportedly restored the next day, after police and special security forces were airlifted to the area to assist the guards. The inmates reportedly were frustrated at the lack of response to repeated complaints about prison conditions and sought a meeting with the provincial governor. According to the Saudi official, demands included the provision of newspapers, doors on bathrooms, and improved food, sanitation and recreation.
Saudi women continued to face severe discrimination in all aspects of their lives, including the family, education, employment, and the justice system. Religious police enforced a modesty code of dress and institutions from schools to ministries were gender-segregated. This year a princess and distant cousin of the king was appointed assistant under secretary at the Ministry of Education-the highest position ever held by a Saudi woman-in charge of girls' education. Saudi businesswomen continued to be active through their own associations, including the Businesswomen's Forum in the Eastern Province. According to one report, of the 76,000 members of the Jeddah, Riyadh and Eastern Province chambers of commerce, some 5,500 were women.
Interior Minister Prince Nayif bin Abdelaziz said in August that the kingdom's high population growth rate and the large number of job-seeking graduates presented "an economic, social, security and cultural problem." Unemployment among Saudi citizens was an estimated 14 percent, and 20 percent among workers aged twenty to twenty-nine years old, according to the chief economist at the Saudi American Bank in Riyadh. The government therefore continued to take steps to reduce its reliance on foreign workers, a process described as "Saudiization," which Prince Nayif declared a "top priority."
The large population of foreign workers included some 1.2 million Egyptians and 1.2 million Indians, according to the U.S. State Department.
Undocumented workers included those who remained after entering the country to perform the haj or umra, and those who stayed after the expiry of their work visas. Migrants have long been subjected to restrictions such as the surrender of passports to Saudi sponsors, limitations on freedom of movement, prohibitions on trade union organizing, and lack of access to legal representation in cases of arrest. Overstayers and violators of the iqama (residency permit system) were given a July 2 deadline to obtain the proper authorizations or leave the country, which authorities later extended to August 29, after which date all penalties were to be "firmly implemented," the Interior Ministry said. Prince Nayif said that iqama violators included those who left or fled their Saudi sponsors or who were carrying out business activities on their own. Anyone without a residence permit after the deadline faced fines of over U.S. $25,000, prison sentences of six months, and deportation. Special police squads searched work places and homes for violators, including both foreign workers and their Saudi employers.
Thousands of foreigners left or were expelled. For example, the Nigerian press reported on July 20 that 1,000 Nigerians had already been rounded up and deported, and Pakistani media said on September 27 that 2,441 Pakistani workers had been deported, in addition to thousands of undocumented workers who left the country voluntarily. In September, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs reportedly wrote to private firms with over twenty employees, instructing them to increase by 25 percent the number of Saudis on their payrolls.
Saudi Arabia continued to provide refuge and financial support to Idi Amin, the exiled Ugandan leader whose regime was responsible for a reign of terror that left an estimated 300,00 dead in the 1970s. After fleeing Uganda in 1979, Amin arrived in the kingdom at the invitation of the late King Faisal and reportedly has since been protected by government-paid Saudi guards. A journalist with Uganda's New Vision newspaper interviewed Amin in Jeddah in 1999 and reported that he had moved from his home in the city center "to a more exclusive area...mainly occupied by powerful oil sheikhs."
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me: and we support this fucked up country... sad shit... all in the name of the all-mighty dollar...
.tom
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