SAUDI ARABIA USCIRF–RECOMMENDED FOR COUNTRIES OF PARTICULAR CONCERN (CPC) KEY FINDINGS I n 2020, religious freedom conditions in Saudi Arabia remained poor despite some ongoing improvements. Saudi Arabia’s official religion is Islam. The construction of non-Muslim houses of worship and public non-Muslim prayer is forbidden. Non-Muslims are not permitted to construct houses of worship and are confined to worshipping in private settings. However, Saudi Arabia in 2020 made public overtures to the global Jewish community. A review of the current year of Saudi textbooks also found significant improvements, including more religiously tolerant language and the removal of intolerant passages, while also noting that “problematic examples still remained.” According to the 1992 Saudi Basic Law of Governance, the constitution is the Qur’an and the sunna (traditions of the Prophet). The judicial system is largely governed by a Saudi interpretation of Shari’a as informed by Hanbali jurisprudence, which imposes capital punishment for apostasy; openly declaring one’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) identity; and peaceful religious or political dissent. Throughout 2020, Saudi Arabia continued to detain and mistreat individuals who dissented from the government’s interpretation of Islam, including USCIRF Religious Prisoner of Conscience Raif Badawi, his lawyer Waleed Abu al-Khair, and atheist poet Ashraf Fayadh. Saudi Arabia also targeted dissidents online, arresting three people in March for insulting God on social media and threatening to prosecute Ayasel Slay, who posted a rap video entitled “Daughter of Mecca” on YouTube in February. In July, Saudi Arabian officials arrested Mohammed al-Bokari for posting a Twitter video calling for LGBTI people to have equal rights. Prison officials sexually assaulted al-Bokari and held him in solitary confinement. Following the outbreak of COVID-19, the Saudi government imposed a lockdown on the majority-Shi’a province of Qatif. It also failed to respond to incitement on television comparing COVID-19-positive Shi’a Muslims to “ISIS suicide bombers.” Despite the government’s promise to review death sentences against minors, several Shi’a prisoners convicted as children received either no change to their sentence or were sentenced to several years in prison. Four members of the Bohra Shi’a community also remained in prison on multiyear sentences following unsubstantiated charges of money laundering and violating charity collection regulations. Saudi Arabia maintained key provisions of the religiously grounded guardianship system in 2020 that violate the religious freedom of Saudi women. It continues to persecute activists who peacefully protest this system. Following mistreatment in prison, including sexual assault and credible allegations of torture, Loujain al-Hathloul was sentenced alongside Mayaa al-Zahrani to nearly six years in prison, though a portion of the sentences were suspended. Guardianship denies women the rights of legal adulthood and allows abusive male guardians to procure Saudi state resources to force a female ward to return home. This power extends over women who have fled internationally or who are escaping domestic violence. It also denies women, including U.S. citizens, custody and visitation rights with their children regardless of the competence of a male legal guardian. RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE U.S. GOVERNMENT • Redesignate Saudi Arabia as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), and lift the waiver releasing the administration from taking otherwise legislatively mandated action as a result of the designation; and • Impose targeted sanctions on Saudi government agencies and officials responsible for severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals’ assets and/ or barring their entry into the United States under human rights related financial and visa authorities, citing specific religious freedom violations. The U.S. Congress should: • Hold public hearings to amplify congressional concerns over prisoners of conscience in Saudi Arabia, including KEY USCIRF RESOURCES & ACTIVITIES • Country Update: Religious Freedom Conditions in Saudi Arabia in 2020 • Issue Update: Guardianship, Women, and Religious Freedom in Saudi Arabia 40 U S C I R F | A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 2 1 Raif Badawi and his counsel Waleed Abu al-Khair, and work with like-minded parliamentarians in other countries to advocate for their release; and • Reintroduce and pass the bipartisan Saudi Educational Transparency and Reform Act, which requires the U.S. Department of State to report annually on religious intolerance in Saudi textbooks and efforts to remove this content.