A Documentary Exposes The Horror of Life in Saudi Arabia,
- Abraham Enoch
- Mar 21, 2016
- 2 min read
A Woman Beheaded In The Road. Five Headless Corpses Hanging rom Cranes. Why DOES Britain Cosy up to This Kingdom of Savagery?
--- Sight is one scene in a shocking documentary to be aired this week
--- It will shed the light on the strict everyday life in Saudi Arabia
--- Middle Eastern nation is one of the world's bloodiest and most secretive
--- Yet Saudi Arabia remains one of Britain’s closest allies worldwide
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contains harrowing footage of beheadings. A woman dressed in black is held down at the side of a public road by four Saudi policemen, after she has been convicted of killing her stepdaughter.
She is executed with a sword blow to the neck, as she screams: ‘I did not do it.’
We have all heard of the brutality of the Saudi regime, but what makes this documentary so chilling is that we see it on camera.
In another beheading scene, the executioner, dressed in the white robes typically worn by Saudi men, raises his curved sword above his head and brings it down in a single sweep.
What the film makes abundantly clear is that the country is a murderous dictatorship which refuses to tolerate dissent.
Yet Saudi Arabia remains one of Britain’s closest allies, not just in the Middle East but worldwide, as it has for nearly a century. We sell them arms. They sell us oil. The royal families of each country are close. Prince Charles has made numerous trips to the kingdom and, when King Abdullah died last year, flags at Westminster flew at half-mast in a highly unusual tribute to a foreign ruler.
In Saudi Arabia, even a minor criticism of the regime can result in a lashing or long prison sentence. Beheadings, the film makes clear, are commonplace — so far this year, the country has been executing its people at the rate of almost one a day.
Ferocious moral codes are enforced by the religious police as they patrol the streets and shopping malls. Blasphemy is punishable by stoning or execution, theft by amputation. Anyone found guilty of insulting Islam faces ten years in prison or perhaps 1,000 lashes.
The outside world is kept in ignorance of most of this because it is impossible for foreign journalists to report from or film in Saudi Arabia without minders. Indeed, it is difficult to get into the country even as a tourist.
But schoolchildren are not just taught to direct hatred at Christians and Jews. They are also instructed to turn on Shia Muslims, a substantial minority in Saudi Arabia.
The boy says chillingly: ‘We learn that the Shia are blasphemers. They should be punished by death. We should fight them in the name of Islam.’
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