10/15/2024 New York (International Christian Concern) — In voting last week at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, representatives rejected Saudi Arabia’s bid for membership on the influential Human Rights Council. Voting for a spot on the council is broken up geographically, with six countries vying for five open spots. The Marshall Islands won the fifth seat, beating Saudi Arabia by just seven votes.
Saudi Arabia has previously sat as a member of the Human Rights Council, most recently for a three-year term beginning in 2017. Saudi Arabia’s unsuccessful bit was in the only competitive race for a seat on the council, with the number of candidates matching the number of open slots in every other region. The United States announced last month that it would not seek reelection to the council.
“We are relieved that enough states took their record on human rights into account when voting,” said Madeleine Sinclair, director for the New York office of International Service for Human Rights. “Saudi Arabia’s record is a laundry list of the kinds of abuses the Council should seek to address.”
The United States has designated Saudi Arabia as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) 13 times since first issuing the designation in 1999, including every year since 2016. The CPC designation is designed to pressure countries that engage in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.
Blasphemy and apostasy are both crimes under Saudi law, with punishment for these violations of Islamic morality including large fines, long terms in prison, floggings, and even death. According to the activist group Reprieve, Saudi Arabia has executed at least 212 people this year, surpassing the kingdom’s previous annual record of 196 people executed in 2022 and 172 people executed in 2023.
The country’s blasphemy law, in essence, outlaws the expression of minority religious belief, while the ban on apostasy prevents Muslims from leaving Islam for another faith. Combined with the idea — taught in schools — that all infants are born Muslim, this leaves little room to identify with any faith other than Islam.
Public worship of any faith other than Islam is prohibited in Saudi Arabia, with the government enforcing this restriction carefully and only allowing private gatherings under the strictest of conditions.
As do many authoritarian regimes around the world, the Saudi government considers religious freedom to be a threat to its absolute grip on power. While it has managed to twist and manipulate Islam into a tool for the state, it does not allow even Muslims to practice their faith in freedom. It even maintains an enforcement agency to ensure that Muslims practice their faith in a way that does not interfere with the interests of the state.
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