20 face lash, prison for dancing in Saudi Arabia

[Judi Lynn]

20 face lash, prison for dancing in Saudi Arabia
Judge sentences foreigners for partying, alcohol, unmarrieds mingling
Updated: 32 minutes ago

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - A Saudi Arabian judge sentenced 20 foreigners to receive lashes and spend several months in prison after convicting them of attending a party where alcohol was served and men and women danced, a newspaper reported Sunday.

The defendants were among 433 foreigners, including some 240 women, arrested by the kingdom's religious police for attending the party in Jiddah, the state-guided newspaper Okaz said. It did not identify the foreigners, give their nationalities or say when the party took place.

Judge Saud al-Boushi sentenced the 20 to prison terms of three to four months and ordered them to receive an unspecified number of lashes, the newspaper said. They have the right to appeal, it added.

The prosecutor general charged the 20 with "drinking, arranging for impudent party, mixed dancing and shooting a video for the party," Okaz said.
(snip/...)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16978938/

[Drum]

1. Yikes.

I'd be interested in who and where-from....:eyes:

[Kutjara]

2. They must have forgotten to pay the appropriate prince.

If it's still the same as during my time in SA, large and boisterous parties featuring alcohol and dancing were strictly forbidden...unless a suitable gratuity was paid to the prince with responsibility for law enforcement in the area. An invite to the party would also help to grease the wheels.

[DrDan]

23. I spent 4 years there

attended many parties where alcohol was present - and some where there was dancing.

never was a gratuity paid to any prince.

never was a prince invited - nor any other Saudi.

Home made wine was de rigeuer - week-end parties were prevalant throughout - Dhahran/Dammam area, Jeddah, Riyadh - throughout the Kingdom.

my guess is they are not Americans or Europeans - probably Filipino or other third-world.

[Kutjara]

27. Fortunately, we didn't have to resort to home-made wine.

A local group of expats had an arrangement with one of the junior ministers in the customs department, so they could import pretty much anything they wanted. His "cousin" had some sort of nebulous role in the police and took a cut of the deal in return for ensuring a lack of attention from the authorities.

A couple of years ago, there was a brief international furore over some Brits who were going to be flogged and jailed for importing alcohol. In the end, a deal was done and they were simply deported. They apparently won their freedom in exchange for saying nothing about the Saudis who were involved in their little business.

[saigon68]

29. Are they training more pilots?

We have planes

[Ian David]

3. Paging Kevin Bacon...

[Solo_in_MD]

4. Sharia and Whabbi Islam in action

At least its dependable

[rpannier]

5. And the Saudi government is moving forward how again???

[Neshanic]

11. Really.

[KurtNYC]

6. Perhaps they were dancing like this...

[kitty1]

10. Yeah, I can understand lashings for that.....n/t

[Judi Lynn]

15. Oh, Jeez. Unfortunately, there's a YouTube clip, too.

Maybe you should be flogged for bringing it up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xi4O1yi6b0&NR

[Canuckistanian]

7. Religion is such a comfort n/t

[Elidor]

8. Insert video of Men without Hats

We can dance if we want to...

[Heywood J]

9. This would be why buying from the Venezuelans is better...

They don't lash and imprison people for having a party and dancing.

[Porcupine]

12. But slavery's OK with them?

http://www.gvnet.com/humantrafficking/SaudiArabia.htm

Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
< Country-by-Country Reports >

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia extends over most of the Arabian peninsula

Can we quit destroying the planet by purchasing oil from the most evil bastards on the planet? Please?

[ShockediSay]

13. Glad we started to undo the glue of the Neocon "kingdom's

religious police" with our last election

God Bless Terry Schiavo, and may she finally rest in peace

[Kali]

14. frigging babtists

[FormerOstrich]

16. Why isn't Pickles and * fixing this.....

I'm sure I've heard * say that freedom is for everyone. We know Pickles is all about women's rights. Why isn't * jawboning the kingdom into liberating the people.....

The religious police, a force resented by many Saudis for interfering in personal lives, enjoys wide powers. Its officers roam malls, markets, universities and other public places looking for such infractions as unrelated men and women mingling, men skipping Islam's five daily prayers and women with strands of hair showing from under their veil.

In May, the Interior Ministry restricted the powers of the religious police to just arresting suspects, because the police sometimes had held people incommunicado and insisted on taking part in ensuing investigations.

[Judi Lynn]

17. Bush and his people were all over abuse of Afghan women!

Bush and the Burqa
by Christine McCarthy McMorris

~snip~
The first in-depth story from Afghanistan appeared in the Los Angeles Times October 5. Under the headline "Response to Terror: Women’s Rights," reporter Robyn Dixon recounted interviews with women and girls who had been beaten by the religious police. "Life under the Taliban is so repressive for Afghan women that many of them now see U.S. military action against their regime as their best hope for a freer life."

Across the country other papers followed suit: "Female Foes of Taliban Seeking Support Abroad" (Washington Post, October 8); "Taliban Regime has Returned Women to Dark Ages" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, October 21); "Afghan Women Lead a Life Restricted by Tradition," (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 6); "Taliban Reaching New Low in Their Protection of Women" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 13).

Throughout, CNN kept Beneath the Veil in the public eye, showing it on September 26 and 30, October 6 and 30, November 17, December 30, and February 3. "Repeated airing," wrote Cox Newspapers’ Julia Malone in an early "putting Afghan women on the map" story, "has driven home the message."

Gone were the days of not knowing where Afghanistan was. Shah became a media celebrity, appearing not only on CNN’s own Larry King Live but also on Good Morning America and NBC’s Today Show. RAWA member Taheema Faryal was interviewed on Good Morning America (October 30), Larry King Live on (November 13), and the CBS Evening News (November 14), where she commented, "Animals have more rights than women in Afghanistan."

What did the oppression of women have to do with the war on terrorism? As early as September 20 Eleanor Smeal told Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times that the Taliban’s treatment of women should have been a warning sign: "These women were the first casualties of the war against the United States."

"In the same way that many Islamic extremist crusades use the oppression of women to help them gain control over wider populations, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden are now employing the tactics of terrorism to gain control," wrote author Jan Goodwin and activist Jessica Neuwirth in an October 19 New York Times op-ed. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed November 4, author Barbara Ehrenreich generalized the proposition: "undamentalism everywhere is no friend to the female sex."

In the first week of November women in Congress got into the act. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas) and 13 of her female senatorial colleagues introduced the Afghan Women and Children Relief Act of 2001. "Mr. President," Hutchinson began her speech to the Senate, "no one in America can have read a newspaper or seen a television report about the plight of women in Afghanistan, and children, without being horrified."

Nor did the White House need a focus group to tell it which way the wind was blowing. On November 17 the State Department released a "Report on the Taliban’s War Against Women," which slammed the Taliban for "egregious acts of violence against women, including rape, abduction, and forced marriage."

Later that day Laura Bush, becoming the first First Lady to speak on a president’s weekly radio address, spoke on the subject of the women of Afghanistan. The president’s wife detailed abuses of the Taliban, including the fact that "only terrorists and the Taliban pull out women’s fingernails for wearing nail polish."
(snip/...)

http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/RINVol5No1/Bush%20burqa.htm

[Eugene]

18. Alternate headline: Saudi court jails foreigners for drinking party

Saudi court jails foreigners for drinking party - AP & The Guardian

The Guardian story uses the same Associated Press info but places a different emphasis.

Serving and drinking alcohol are crimes in Saudi Arabia.
Running drinking clubs has gotten foreigners killed.
I don't condone this but the partygoers should have known
the risks.

[OneBlueSky]

19. If you can walk, you can dance . . . If you can talk, you can sing . . .

[knitter4democracy]

20. At our college, we were just fined and put on social probation.

Man, lashes and prison? That's harsh.

[Coventina]

21. Our fucking allies. When they aren't hijacking our planes

they're beating people for having a good time.

This is why we need to aggressively pursue alternative energy.
These people need to become poor again.

[INDIA]

30. Bingo. n/t

[LeftHander]

22. Note to self, cancel Saudi Arabia vacation....nt

[Javaman]

24. Okay, so let me get this clear...

We invade a secular nation based on a lie about them having WMD's, but yet we ally ourselves with a fundamentalist nation that beats not only their own citizens, but foreigners as well, for dancing and drinking.

Whew, I'm glad that makes sense, because this is a classic version of morons* democracy.

Nothing to see here, move along citizen and ignore the pResident kissing the Saudi prince on the mouth...

[DemoTex]

25. " .. arrested by the kingdom's religious police .."

Read it and weep, right-wing fundy zealots.

[KansDem]

26. Guess we had better not invade SA to liberate it...

Don't want all those happy, jubilant Saudis dancing the the street to be lashed...

[SayWhatYo]

28. If we do that here, do you think white people will stop dancing?

I hope so... Btw, I'm just playing... Joking. Please do not read too much into that.

[davekriss]

31. Passport stamped "prostitute"

A friend of mine had a job 20 or so years ago as a Director of Entertainment at a foreign workers camp (fortune 100 company). All she did was arrange a normal, western party on encampment grounds. She was summarily deported with the aforementioned word stamped in her passport. (She's a very attractive blonde woman now in her forties who knows how to have fun, but she's also an educated professional and not stupid.)