Religious police told to smile
Brian Whitaker
Tuesday June 10, 2003
The Guardian Saudia Arabia's feared religious police are being given special training to "deal effectively and pleasantly with the public", the Jeddah-based daily Arab News reported yesterday.
About 200 members have attended the course in "communication skills" and "success strategies".
The mutawwa - officially known as the commission for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice - enforce strict standards of behaviour. Besides ensuring that businesses close for the five daily prayers, and that women observe the dress code, they arrest unrelated men and women who are found together, and check text messages on teenagers' mobiles.
During a school fire in Mecca in March they reportedly drove back girls who tried to escape without wearing headscarves, and prevented male rescuers from entering the building on the grounds that they would be "mixing" with the opposite sex. Fourteen girls died in the blaze.
Yesterday Amnesty International was sceptical about the training programme. "Saudi Arabia's religious police have an appalling record of brutality and discrimination going far beyond failings with interpersonal skills," a spokesman said. "Their track record includes making violent and arbitrary arrests, subjecting women in particular to taunts and vicious beatings, and lashing out at people taken into detention.
"This issue is not whether a law enforcement agency should be learning to be more courteous, but whether the Saudi authorities are genuinely prepared to root out the habitual human rights abuses."