Posted on 06/04/2005 2:08:06 PM PDT by CHARLITE
All Eyes on U.S. State Dept. as Final Deadline for CPC Sanctions on Saudi Arabia Nears
For Immediate Release You are free to disseminate the following news. We request that you reference International Christian Concern, and include our web address http://www.persecution.org
(ICC - June 2, 2005) - The Washington, D.C. based human rights organization International Christian Concern (ICC) is getting reports of 46 confirmed arrests of Christians, with some sources citing in excess of 100 Christians arrested. From last Friday through yesterday, Saudi authorities engaged in a major crackdown involving a joint effort of standard police forces and Muttawa religious police. In the last couple of days the raids have spread from the capital, Riyadh. This is the largest crackdown in a decade by the religiously oppressive country.
The crackdown comes in the wake of allegations against the United States for desecrating the Qur'an at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. During the latest wave of arrests, Saudi authorities have been ransacking houses and destroying any Bibles found in the victims' possession. Last weekend ICC confirmed reports that 8 Christians were arrested and documents naming other area Christians were seized.
On Saturday, May 28. 2005 at 8:30 p.m. Chittirical John Thomas Passport # A9757690), an Indian national, was pulled from work in Riyadh by Saudi Muttawa authorities, dragged to his home, and beaten in front of his maid and 5 year-old son. The Muttawa gathered his Bible and all religious paraphernalia, and took 37 year-old Thomas to the Shemaissy Detention Center. Thomas's wife, who is 5 months pregnant, has not heard from her husband since. In addition to John Thomas, 7 other Indian nationals were arrested in similar fashion and detained for their faith as Christians while they were asleep on Saturday night.
Valiakalail Samuel Daniel (Passport # Z1101522), Koil Pillai Vijaykumar (E3188388), Mutham Plackal Mathai Thomas (E2584732), Pathivadathil James George (U3128086), George Matthew (E7881606), Biju Thomas (E4201849), and Georgekutty Thomas (A5717194) are the confirmed names of the others arrested. These arrests followed the detention of Samkutty Varghese's detention outside of his bible study on March 22, 2005. Varghese (Passport # E8421022) possessed the names and numbers of other Christians attending the same fellowship group. ICC has received credible reports that Varghese was sentenced to 10 months in prison along with numerous lashes.
This pogrom-like sweeping of the Christian minority in Saudi Arabia is a great disappointment to the United States' State Department, and shows deficient resolve in enforcing sanctions on "Countries of Particular Concern" (CPC). The United States has allowed over 2 months after the initial deadline for implementing direct action against Saudi Arabia for the CPC status. Now, they only have 10 days left to act under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. The inaction of the world's leader in promoting freedom is reprehensible, and risks breaching the line of irrelevance on matters of religious freedom and human rights. This latest crackdown on Christians is inexcusable and highlights the oppressive regime under which all religious minorities live and work in Saudi Arabia. The United States and the broader international community need to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for egregious violations of religious freedom.
ICC is a Washington, D.C. based human rights organization that exists to help persecuted Christians worldwide. ICC delivers humanitarian aid, trains and supports persecuted pastors, raises awareness in the US regarding the problem of persecution, and is an advocate for the persecuted on Capitol Hill and the State Department.
The Saudis desecrate and burn all Bibles. Amnesty International, the ACLU, and Howard Dean praise this as forward thinking multi-culturalism.
As we grovel somemore.
Can't upset our sugar daddies can we?
Meanwhile in the United States, if you some much sneeze on a Koran, you might as well go to Hades according to the American media and the liberal establishment.
What sick and strange times we live in.
And evil.
The liberal establishment is absolutely evil and must be utterly destroyed.
Non-western Christians have always been persecuted and have always been in danger in the Kingdom.
Western Christians are normally tolerated as long as they keep it low-profile, but "easterners", Indians, Phillipinos, and others, are often harrassed. Their prayer leaders have been threatened with execution, although in the case I was aware of when I was there, the Phillipino ambassador groveled appropriately and their sentences were commuted from "death" to two years in prison.
This, sadly, is not new. And the muttawa have always been pencil-necked jerks, in need of some serious slapping around.
Articles which begin with a functionally useless sentence due to the use of an acronym no one is likely to understand, turn me off.
No matter how interesting the subject might be.
Solution, arm the 8 million foreign workers and let them take over the country.
I'm sure the Saudis are deeply saddened by the "great disappointment" of our State Department.
The Saudis are not our friends. They will stab us in the back at every opportunity and especially when it comes to promoting their demonic religion.
It's PC, and I hate PC with utter passion.
Because it should be repeated, in bold:
Of course not. They are freaking royalty.
Today I keep it handy next to THE BATHROOM READER in the john.
Has anyone ever wondered why Louis Farrakhan kept referring to the number ...19...on the day of the so-called "Million Man March" in Washington DC. on October 16, 1995??
Might that Muslim been in the loop to the knowledge of 19 hijackers 6 years later??
"The liberal establishment is absolutely evil and must be utterly destroyed".
I know that's a very strong statement .. but the more I hear what the liberals say and then I see what they do .. it's sickening how they distort everything .. Saul Alinsky would be proud.
Islam's dark side is the RULE not the exception. Those that seem to feel it has something redeming remind me of the useful idiots who had nice things to say about the USSR.
I'm sure our friends, the Saudis, who killed 3000 of our citizens on 9/11, are furnishing these Christians Bibles while they are imprisoned.
What pitiful dopes we are!
Couldn't have said it better myself. It seems to me that we aren't going to be able to destroy Islam forever (which is the true objective), unless we first discredit liberalism here in America. Liberalism in "old Europe" is already reaping its own rewards and is actually tilling the bitter soil of its own conquest by islamofascism.
I predict that in 20 years and possibly less, America will have to wage WW IV against what will then officially be Eurabia, but we can't begin do liberate Eurabia unless and until we eliminate liberalism here.
Item: We are already into WW IV. Afghanistan and Iraq are only the first battles (and battlegrounds) of WW IV, as President Bush has said many times.
Char
oy.
Four generations ago, they were tending camels and sitting around campfires, cooking over dried cattle dung. Where the "royal house of Saud" came from, I don't know.
Char
I hope you figure it out the next time you fill up your tank.
I agree that we are in the opening salvos of a world war. Besides the IslamoFascists, the number one enemy is the democrat party.
see 22
There were 20. I bailed.
This article is about people being rounded up like cattle and you're worried about sentence structure??? Get a life.
"The liberal establishment is absolutely evil and must be utterly destroyed."
Oddly enough... the "globalists" fight for / or against the same things as the liberals.
Go figure.
Precisely!!
Divine intuition.
Lies, desires, and deflection are his weapons. Your religion is now his.
C.A.I.R. is silent.
When it comes down to that, I'm ready. They are truly enemies of this country.
A better question is how freaking royalty coexists with Islam.
Listen people, we are doing it to ourselves. No one stands up to these anti-Christians. Christians complain but are mute.
Arabia has been inhabited for thousands of years by nomadic Semitic tribes. With the birth (AD 570) of Muhammad, in Mecca, Arabia was briefly the center of Islam, but by the end of the 7th cent. the area was disunited. Modern Saudi Arabia owes its existence to Ibn Saud, an adherent of the Wahhabi Muslim sect. Beginning in 1902 he conquered the Nejd, Al Hasa, and Hejaz regions, and in 1932 he proclaimed himself king of a united Saudi Arabia. Oil was discovered in 1936; commercial production began in 1938. Ibn Saud died in 1953 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Saud. In 1964 Saud was deposed by Faisal, who secured (1974) an agreement giving the Saudis a 60% majority ownership of foreign oil concessions in their country. In 1975 Faisal was assassinated; he was replaced by Khalid, who inaugurated a program of industrialization and social welfare. In the conflict with Israel, Saudi Arabia has generally supported the Arab states, although as a friend of the U.S. it is a somewhat moderating force. Its moderating influence has also been felt in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), in which it usually has acted to stabilize petroleum prices. Khalid died in 1982 and was succeeded as king by Fahd. Military clashes, oil-policy disputes, and rioting Iranian pilgrims in Mecca led Saudi Arabia to sever diplomatic relations with Iran in 1989.
>..the Phillipino ambassador groveled..<
What else could he do? Let his people be executed? You should know that Philippino laborers work under conditions akin to modern-day slavery.
I don't see the American ambassador stand up for the American expatriates. Go see the conditions in Riyadh, Jubail and Yanbu. We too kiss up to the Saudis on a daily basis and we are supposed to be a super power?
Back in the 70's we had a large workforce of South Koreans who were also in Saudi to protect the country in the event of an invasion. They were never issued weapons because the Saudis were afraid that the Koreans would take over. Every one of them was ex-military.
No criticism was intended toward the Filipino official. I understand very well what the Filipinos face in the Kingdom, in fact, that was my point.
As you infer, even though the US is the Kingdom's closest ally, Americans are forced to keep their worship services low-profile. Where they have been too indiscrete, and especially where they have been so foolish as to involve locals, they have been broken up as well. Saudis who convert, as you know, are executed, and anyone, even an American, who does anything that can be construed as "proselytizing" a Saudi is in serious trouble.
American chaplains during the first Gulf War had to be referred to as "morale officers" and had to remove the crosses from their lapels, if I remember correctly.
The Saudis maintain that they have "freedom of religion" because they allow non-muslims to work in the kingdom. But they are ruthless in suppressing non-muslim religious expression, and even non-Wahab Islam, for that matter.
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