The initial details of the case are as straightforward as one could possibly expect in such a controversial situation. The poet and activist Ashraf Fayadh was first arrested and interrogated by Saudi Arabia’s religious police in Abha in 2013, when an acquaintance complained that he was spreading atheistic ideas through his poetry.
Initially, he was found to have repented, and was released. By January 2014, however, he was rearrested, accused of blasphemy, and of illicit relations with women.
Delve deeper, and the case becomes more ambiguous. The first charge was sparked by the testimony of the man who reported him, as well as an anthology he had published earlier; the second was based on pictures found on his cellphone. How these were found is unclear. Fast forward to November 2015, and Fayadh is sentenced to death.
“I was really shocked, but it was expected, though I didn’t do anything that deserves death,” Fayadh told The Guardian after the sentence was passed.
Fayadh does not only mean this in the sense that human rights activists mean it; that one should not be put to death for one’s beliefs. He literally means he does not deserve death under the Saudi legal system – that he was not blasphemous, and did not have illicit relations with women. According to court documents, Fayadh said, during his initial repentance, “I am repentant to God most high, and am innocent of what appeared in my book mentioned in this case.”
“The documents also state that he admitted that he had relationships with the women,” reports The Guardian. “But Fayadh said his words had been twisted; the women were fellow artists and the photos on his phone, some of which he posted on Instagram, were taken during Jeddah art week, Saudi Arabia’s most important contemporary art event.”
Stephen Stapleton, a friend of Fayadh and fellow member of the art community in Abha, told The Guardian: “I’ve known him since 2003. He’s a truly wonderful, kind person. He’s an intellectual and creative but he’s not an atheist.”
Then there is uncertainty over the reasons for the initial complaint against Fayadh; the complainant, Fayadh’s father said, had a “vendetta” against the poet, and reported him for purely religious reasons.
“I do not believe that there was any personal motivation behind the initial complaint,” Amnesty International’s Saudi Researcher, Sevag Kechichian, told Daily Maverick. “We believe the complaint was because his ideas stood in contradiction to specific beliefs and laws.”
Amnesty International believed they were aware of the identity of the person who reported Fayadh, but did not wish to divulge it, Kechichian said. Fayadh’s father, however, previously said the complainant was a man Fayadh had argued with in a café (interview translated by the New York Times) and with whom he had an ongoing feud.
The Times took the line that Fayadh was specifically singled out to send a warning message to artists and activists. “He was found guilty on five charges that included spreading atheism, threatening the morals of Saudi society, and having illicit relations with women, according to court documents. He was sentenced to death for apostasy,” wrote Ben Hubbard.
Hubbard quoted Mona Kareem, a stateless activist from Kuwait, who added: “In that region there are a lot of artists and writers, and Ashraf has been very prominent in the last few years. They targeted him because he is the most vulnerable in the group.”
All this is worrisome indeed for Fayadh himself. But Kechichian told Daily Maverick a different story: that Fayadh’s sentence is but a drop in the ocean of a growing trend of harsh sentences for similar crimes. Amnesty has previously noted that Saudi Arabia has recently recorded its highest death toll in two decades, with an average of one person every two days. A few notable examples include writer Raif Badawi, who was flogged 50 times after his sentencing to 10 years in prison, as well as 1,000 lashes for blasphemy last year; a death sentence for a protester, Ali al-Nimr, for offences committed while he was under-aged; and 350 lashings for a 74-year-old British grandfather, Karl Andree, who was found with alcohol in his car.
Late on Monday night, Amnesty International sent Daily Maverick a statement regarding the case of nine activists awaiting the death sentence in Saudi Arabia – one of them eighty years old. All of them, says Amnesty, protested peacefully.
“A UN Working Group has determined that the Saudi Arabian authorities have arbitrarily detained nine peaceful activists in blatant violation of international law, in an Opinion that sets out damning evidence of Saudi Arabia’s utter disregard for human rights,” the statement said.
“Amnesty International has repeatedly called for the immediate and unconditional release of all nine activists, whom it considers prisoners of conscience.
“They include six founding members of a key human rights organisation, the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), as well as the imprisoned blogger, Raif Badawi, his lawyer and human rights defender, Waleed Abu al-Khair, and Fadhel al-Manasif, of the now disbanded Adala Center for Human Rights.”
“The UN Working Group’s Opinion leaves no shred of doubt – the Saudi Arabian authorities are consistently abusing the country’s vague laws to deprive human rights defenders and others of their liberty, and deny them their basic right to freedoms of expression, association and assembly,” said James Lynch, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.
The Opinion adopted by the Working Group found that all nine activists were arbitrarily detained and deprived of liberty, in contravention of several articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Amnesty said. These articles set out the prohibition of arbitrary detention, the right to fair trial, and the rights to freedom of opinion and expression and of peaceful assembly and association.
“This conclusion is particularly alarming given Saudi Arabia’s commitments as a member of the UN Humans Rights Council to uphold the highest standards of human rights,” said the statement.
“As a member of the UN Human Rights Council, Saudi Arabia purports to uphold and respect the highest standards of human rights, yet this UN decision provides damning proof of their contempt for human rights, and for human rights activism. It also shatters the illusion that they have anything more than the scantest respect for international human rights law and the peaceful exercise of the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly,” said Lynch.
“Instead of punishing human rights defenders and silencing bloggers and lawyers, Saudi Arabia’s authorities should seek to address the yawning gulf between its dire human rights record and its responsibilities as a member of the UN Human Rights Council.”
The Working Group spoke of a “vicious crackdown” by Saudi authorities on peaceful activists, and accused the former of “grave and systematic violations of the norms related to the right to fair trial.”
According to Kechichian, it is only too common for defendants to have paltry access to legal representation, and for harsh sentences to be passed during processes that contravene even the laws of the Saudi justice system.
“The trouble is,” Kechichian told Daily Maverick, “that the West is not willing to criticise these countries, and that there is not sufficient outrage, and Saudi Arabia interprets that as complicity. The West will remain diplomatic as long as that is where the oil is. This is not even a question; it is absolutely uncontroversial. And we absolutely have to change that. The responsibility does not lie at the feet of the Muslim community.
“For as long as the greatest Western powers are totally, or partially silent, Saudi Arabia will interpret that as tacit acceptance.” It was the responsibility of the United Nations to clamp down hard on violations of international law , added Kechichian.
In other areas of the world, Muslim organisations have voiced concern at the increasingly strict interpretation of Sharia law in Saudi Arabia. Earlier in November, the Universal Muslim Association of America announced that a group of humanitarian organisations, non-profits, and religious congregations would hold a rally in front of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in the US to protest the death sentences assigned to Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr and his nephew, the abovementioned Ali al-Nimr, for their participation in peaceful protests.
Under Saudi law, a defendant can be pardoned by the King, but only once the case has been heard in appeals courts and been escalated to the Supreme Court. The Saudi justice system itself is grounded in Sharia law, and the court’s judges are from the Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam. In the Wahhabi interpretation of Sharia, the more serious religious crimes such as blasphemy and apostasy are punishable by the death penalty. Ultimately, King Salman must approve all executions – in fact, Human Rights Watch researcher, Ben Coogle, told media, a conviction for apostasy is “pretty rare”.
Fayadh has thirty days to appeal, and Avaaz has set up a petition. But what his chances are, in the current climate, remains to be seen. Fayadh was allegedly detained without charge for a lengthy period, and his ID document was confiscated, which meant that he was unable to obtain legal representation.
Kareem said there were gross violations of justice in Fayadh’s case. “[After his re-arrest in 2014] they said you must have a retrial and we will change the prosecutor and the judges,” she said. “The new judge did not even talk to him, he just made the verdict.”
In light of Kechichian’s critique of the West’s involvement – or lack thereof – it is illuminating to examine the UK’s somewhat anodyne announcement following the release of the abovementioned grandfather, Andree. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said at the time: “I'm grateful to the Saudi Arabian Government for their efforts in ensuring this positive outcome, following our discussions during my visit. It's through the strength and breadth of the relationship between our nations that we have been able to overcome a difficult issue like this.”
In South Africa, the response has been somewhat less muted. The Open Mosque, which is either famous or infamous for its liberal take on Islam – depending on one’s perspective – decried the sentence, saying it was “savage” and in contravention of the scriptures. “This is a non-Qur'anic savagery that has no foundation in Islam's sacred scripture,” said Jamila Abrahams, the Mosque’s Secretary. “The barbaric, brutal and backward Saudis must be denounced for their primitive, medieval mindset.”
Members of the literary community and local Muslims alike expressed an outpouring of sympathy for Fayadh, and called unanimously for the release of both Fayadh and other members of the art community in Saudi Arabia.
Author (and Daily Maverick columnist) Margie Orford, who leads PEN South Africa, and is on the board of PEN International, condemned the sentence. “I am appalled that writer and artist Ashraf Fayadh has been sentenced to death for ‘atheism' by a Saudi Arabian court,” she said. “Saudi Arabia has an appalling human rights record and is particularly vicious towards those who think, speak, write or draw freely.” The world was “poorer and more fearful” because of religious fundamentalism and political intolerance, she said.
South Africa needed to guard against the same lines of thought, if not the same severity of consequences, Orford warned. “In the international community of writers and artists an injury to one is an injury to all,” she added. “Unfortunately the threat of persecution spills over Saudi Arabia’s borders too. In South Africa we saw the vicious assault of the writer ZP Dala in Durban this year – she was assaulted because of some imagined infraction against religious beliefs – a frightening first for a country which fought a long time for freedom, and which knows intimately what it is like to have our writers imprisoned and killed. As President of PEN South Africa I call on our government to protest against the death sentence given to Ashraf Fayadh, and the imprisonment and threatened flogging of the blogger Raif Badawi.”
PEN International Chairperson, Salil Tripathi, added, “The decision to sentence Ashraf Fayadh to death is outrageous not only because it is vastly disproportionate to anything he may have done, not only because the death penalty is wrong in every instance, and not only because he has said in mitigation that he has done nothing that deserves death, but also because it is not a crime to hold an idea, however unpopular, nor is it a crime to express opinion peacefully. Saudi Arabia must unconditionally release Fayadh, as well as Raif Badawi and Waleed Abulkhair.”
The author, scholar and head of the Creative Writing programme at UCT, Imraan Coovadia, simply said: “I can't imagine you're going to get many people [who] support that death sentence.”
Local poet and former academic, Rustum Kozain, took a harder line, saying those who passed the death sentence for apostasy were hypocritical even in their own faith. “There is no compunction in Islam,” he told Daily Maverick. “The Qur’an explicitly states that you cannot force someone to be Muslim. In other words, no one who forces another to be Muslim can call themselves Muslim."
Award-winning author Ishtiyaq Shukri* added, "I am deeply saddened to hear about the death sentence... I join the literary community and human rights organisations in their calls to have this harsh punishment rescinded. I also appeal to all those in positions of influence and power to intervene on Fayadh's behalf. I especially appeal to the Saudi authorities to demonstrate compassion and mercy, because Allah is the Compassionate and Allah is the Merciful."
The author Sarah Lotz said, bluntly, “I'm currently in the UK, where paranoia is high after the Paris attacks, and there's a great deal of anger towards the UK government for continuing to pander to Saudi Arabia considering its vile human rights record and ties to Daesh. Fayadh's case is, sickeningly, yet another example of the 'religious police' - how scary and familiar are those two words? - using fear and violence to shut down dissenting voices and strangle free speech, as we saw with Raif Badawi. I'm desperately hoping that the international community will pull out all the stops to fight this, but I'm not holding my breath: sanctions may have gone some way to end South Africa's appalling human rights violations, but in this case, the Saudis hold too many resource cards.”
Another author, the poet, columnist and editor, Helen Moffett, was deeply distressed. “What is there to say, other than this is barbarism on barbarism? At least - cold comfort - this got to the UK media, and there will hopefully be a stink, not least at the UN, and a retraction,” she wrote from the US. “I feel awful about Fayadh, but I worry about the little people in countries like this who get the death sentence because they kyked a hardline neighbour skeef. Fucking Salem all over and over. We never learn.”
But it was perhaps the email from Cape Town Muslim and long-time activist, Shehnaz Cassim, that held the most heartfelt appeal. “I continue to be reviled by the actions of the medieval Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I, for one, am mortified at the decision to execute Ashraf Fayadh,”she wrote.
“What I find most disheartening is that because the Saudi's are the custodians of the holiest site in the Muslim world, their actions are seen to be representative of Muslims around the globe. This isn't necessarily true. What I hope for is that other centres of Islamic scholarship develop that can actively challenge the Saudi interpretation of Islamic Text.
“All around, I pray for a more equal, peaceful world.”
Words that may well resonate with Fayadh as he waits and hopes. DM
Photo: Ashraf Fayadh (his own Instagram photo)
Read more:
* Edit: Daily Maverick approached Ishtiyaq Shukri for comment on Monday, but could not reach him. Shukri responded on Tuesday, and this feature was duly updated.