The Shia of Saudi Arabia have for many years also complained bitterly of discrimination. Unlike their Bahraini counterparts, they form only a minority of Saudi nationals, albeit now a substantial minority of between 5 and 15 per cent, with most dwelling in the Eastern Province, close to Bahrain, and home to several of the kingdom’s key oil fields. Over the years, most of their complaints have been over the province’s relative underdevelopment compared to the rest of Saudi Arabia and the institutional discrimination they have faced, especially over public sector employment opportunities. There have been fewer protests than in Bahrain, nonetheless riots broke out in 1979—which were brutally suppressed — and in 2009 there were reports of attacks by Saudi security forces on Shia pilgrims.[610] On occasion there has also been organised opposition, with 450 Shia activists signing a petition in 2003 entitled ‘Partners in One Nation’ which demanded the equal treatment of Shia under Saudi Arabia’s laws.[611]
As with Bahrain, Shia protests were taking place in Saudi Arabia immediately prior to 2011. In December 2010 for example, violent clashes erupted in the holy city Medina during the Ashoura commemorations — a key religious day for Shia. It transpired that hundreds of Sunni hard-liners had attacked Shia worshippers, reportedly using poles and stones. Although security forces were eventually deployed, there was apparently a delay of more than two hours before the attackers were dispersed. Moreover, while several state-backed newspapers reported the attacks, they eschewed mention of the sectarian element, with one[612] even blaming ‘young zealots wearing black clothes’—in a reference to Shia worshippers — for inciting the violence.[613]
The situation in Kuwait has generally been better, as although the Shia community is estimated to be a fairly substantial 15 per cent of the national population, it is much more closely integrated into the emirate’s business elite. Nevertheless, there have been a growing number of incidents which indicate rising sectarian tension, especially with regard to allegations of strengthening links between Kuwait’s Shia and Bahrain’s Shia, and between Kuwait’s Shia and Iran. In late 2010 for example, the state-backed Al-Qabas newspaper reported that there were Shia cells throughout the Gulf monarchies, including Kuwait, which were ready to strike in the event of any attack on Iran. Meanwhile two Kuwaiti Shia activists were stripped of their citizenship on the grounds that they were ‘trying to stir up conflict amongst Muslims’. Most dramatically, four Kuwaiti Shia were also arrested at about the same time and charged, along with three Iranian expatriates, with spying for Iran in Kuwait and leaking confidential military information, a charge which the Iranian government has vehemently denied.[614] In early 2011, soon after the beginning of the Bahraini revolution the tension in Kuwait escalated further, with other state-backed newspapers publishing anti-Shia articles. Many described the Bahraini revolution through a sectarian lens, promoting evidence of connections to Iran, while Al-Watan newspaper carried an article specifically on one of the denaturalised Shia activists.[615] Although nothing compared to Bahrain’s Al-Bandar scandal, the Kuwaiti government has also recently been criticised for compiling demographic statistics based on sect. In June 2011 a report began circulating widely on the internet which claimed that the government was trying to determine the exact number — rumoured to be 15.7 per cent — of the Kuwaiti Shia national population. This prompted a strong response from the Kuwaiti Ministry for the Interior which stated that ‘There is no truth whatsoever in the allegations that the interior ministry has prepared statistics about the number of Kuwaiti nationals based on their Sunni or Shiite sects’ and that ‘…the interior ministry does not have the prerogatives to issue such statistics’.[616]
Evidence of sectarian tension in the UAE, where there is believed to be a Shia minority making up about 5 per cent of the total national population, is currently more anecdotal. As in Kuwait, most of the Emirati Shia tend to be well integrated, especially in Dubai where they are a major force in the emirate’s business community. In recent years, however, there has been a discernible shift in attitudes, with many Shia complaining of more limited employment opportunities and — on occasion — discrimination in the workplace. With the situation in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and with the rising tension between the UAE and Iran this is likely to get much worse in the near future. Already there are clear indications that the UAE authorities distrust Arab Shia expatriates in their country, including even those who have loyally worked in the UAE’s public sector for decades. In 2009, for example, the UAE reportedly began deporting dozens of long-term Lebanese Shia expatriates, seemingly on the grounds that they had financial or other connections to Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Since then many other Lebanese and other Arab Shia have been deported from the UAE, usually with no notice. Interestingly, a committee has now been formed in Lebanon to combat this sectarian discrimination, and has provided details of many of the Lebanese deportees, including one man who had worked as a journalist in Sharjah for twenty-two years and another who had lived in the UAE for thirty-five years, owned three companies and had $5 million worth of contracts in the UAE, and employed more than eighty Arab Sunni expatriates in the country. The former claims that he had no warning and was not even allowed to pack his bags, while the latter explained that he was held at the airport after returning from a vacation and denied entry into the UAE for ‘security reasons’. Confirming the deportations, a senior Hezbollah representative has argued that the UAE has ‘violated their rights and freedom’ and has called on the UAE authorities to ‘save the hundreds of Lebanese families who have contributed to the development of your country’.[617]
Censorship and limiting expression
Best viewed as an early response to the accumulating internal pressures in the Gulf monarchies, coupled with a lack of transparency associated with prevailing political structures, there has been a dramatic increase in censorship in the region. For decades there have been crude attempts to black out articles in foreign newspapers, ban certain books, fire journalists, and harass academics who spoke out of line. But with the advent of new communications — especially involving mobile telephones and the internet — the governments’ responses have had to become far more sophisticated, often employing the latest technologies, methods, and new legal apparatus to cut off channels of free expression and remove or discredit those responsible. As the final chapter of this book demonstrates, this is becoming harder for governments to do, as media evolves and opponents manage to keep information and ideas flowing beyond governmental control.