Saudi police shot and wounded three Shiite protesters in the oil-rich Eastern Province on Thursday while trying to disperse a protest calling for the release of prisoners, a witness said.
The shooting happened when about 600 to 800 protesters, all Shiite and including women, took to the streets of the city of al-Qateef to demand the release of nine Shiite prisoners, said the witness, requesting anonymity.
“As the procession in the heart of the city was about to finish, soldiers started shooting at the protesters, and three of them were wounded,” the witness said.
Photo: Reuters
The three wounded, all men, were hospitalized, but their injuries were “moderate,” he said, adding that the shooting continued for about 10 minutes and about 200 policemen were present.
The incident came as the kingdom braced for street protests yesterday after calls on Facebook and Twitter.
In Washington, the US said it would closely monitor unrest in Saudi Arabia and restated its support for universal values.
“We will of course continue to monitor closely this particular situation,” said Ben Rhodes, a senior foreign policy adviser to US President Barack Obama.
“What we have said is that we are going to support a set of universal values in every country in the region,” he said.
Life was normal in Riyadh late on Thursday, but with “more than normal” police patrols.
Last Saturday, the interior ministry had issued a stern reminder that any demonstration was illegal and warned activists that the security forces had been authorized to crack down on any protests.
The authorities on Sunday released Shiite cleric Sheikh Tawfiq al-Aamer, whose arrest last month provoked demonstrations.
Several hundred people had protested in the east last Friday after Aamer was arrested on Feb. 27, reportedly for calling for a constitutional monarchy in the kingdom, which is an absolute monarchy.
Shiites, who are mainly concentrated in the Eastern Province, make up about 10 percent of the Saudi population and complain of marginalization in a country dominated by the puritanical Wahhabi Sunni doctrine.
The Eastern Province borders Bahrain, a Shiite-majority kingdom ruled by a Sunni dynasty that has been rocked by anti-government protests since Feb. 14.
Cyber activists used Facebook to call for a “Day of Rage” after yesterday’s prayers. Another page calls for a “Saudi revolution” to begin on March 20.
On both pages, activists are calling for political and economic reforms, jobs, freedom and women’s rights.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema