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Saudi Arabia has arrested more than 50 suspects for crimes, including prostitution and begging after Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman ordered the creation of a unit to the police with “immoral acts”, after years of loosely hard social restriction of the kingdom.
The Ministry of the Interior – Founded for Solving “Community and Trafficking Safety” – arrested 11 women for prostitution, for the first time Saudi authorities They have publicly acknowledged the existence of practice in more than a decade.
He also rounded up dozens of strangers for “immoral acts” in the salons for massage and forcing women and children to work as street beggars.
The initiative compared the committee to promote virtue and virtue of virtue, a religious police force that had long been converted to the sharp implementation of some of the strictest segregation of gender sexes and moral codes before Prince Mohammed He took him away with many of his powers in 2016.
De facto ruler has since prompted an aggressive plan to diversify the economy and relax strict social and religious customs, such as the abolition of the bans for decades at music concerts and cinemas. While the Government announced the Law on “Public Decency” in 2019, it was not strictly implemented.
Analysts said it was not clear what initiated the action. But Khalid al-Sulaiman, a columnist for the semi-official Okaz Daily, wrote that the community safety unit was set up in response to a “significant increased activity” in alleged violations related to morality and sex, including advertising for such activities on social media platforms.
“Our country has a special religious and social identity as the birthplace of Islam and no one should distort the image of the Saudi society that has been established over the years as a society dominated by moral and social values at a high level,” he wrote last month.
“If such immoral and illegal practices have been derived before, those who practice them today should never feel that they can appear in public without consequences.”
Some users of Saudi social media have suggested that the community safety unit is a return of a religious police, but “without long beards.”
But other public members welcomed the move. “Getting a trade in people is a good thing,” said Bandar, a 36-year-old father of three who did not want to give their last name. “Let them clean the earth.”
With an increase in new economic activities such as tourism, rapid social changes and the arrival of more foreign workers, the authorities found themselves with an obvious increase in drug abuse and prostitution.
Although the data is scarce, anecdotic evidence suggests that some of the visa restrictions and suppression on women’s freedom has enabled sexual trade.
Last month, the Ministry of the Interior announced that the unit would fight “crimes violating personal rights, violating the fundamental freedoms of the Sharia law and the legal system of the Kingdom or in any way compromise individual dignity.”
Analysts claim that presentation of the unit as an effort to protect freedom and rights may indicate that the Government wants to improve criticism from groups of human rights and Western forces.
“Usually framing such announcements would be about security, not human rights,” said Sultan Alamer, an older resident associate at the New Lines Institute based in Washington.
The kingdom is expected to receive increased control in the years ahead while preparing for the host of the main international events, including the 2034 World Cup, and seeks to attract foreign investments.
