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Saudi Arabia has arrested more than 50 suspects of crimes, including prostitution and begging, after the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman ordered the creation of a unit to the police of “immoral acts”, after years to loosen the hard social restrictions of the kingdom.
The new unit of the Ministry of the Interior – created to tackle “community security and trafficking in human beings” – arrested 11 women for prostitution, the first time Saudi authorities have publicly recognized the existence of practice in more than a decade.
He also gathered dozens of foreigners for “immoral acts” in massage salons and to force women and children to work as street beggars.
The initiative has established comparisons with the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a religious police force which has long been known to severely apply part of the codes of strict gender to the world before in the world before Prince Mohammed I stripped it of many of its powers in 2016.
The de facto sovereign has since pushed an aggressive program to diversify the economy and to relax strict social and religious customs, for example by raising prohibitions of several decades in musical concerts and cinemas. While the government announced a law of “public decency” in 2019, it was not strictly applied.
Analysts said that it was not clear which had triggered repression. But Khalid Al-Slaiman, columnist for the semi-supply daily Okaz, wrote that the community security unit had been created in response to an “increased notable activity” in alleged violations relating to morality and sex, including advertising for such activities on social media platforms.
“Our country has a special religious and social identity as a place of birth of Islam, and no one should distort the image of Saudi society that has been established over the years as a society dominated by high-level moral and social values,” he wrote last month.
“If such immoral and illegal practices were previously carried out in secret, those who practice them today should never feel that they can appear in public without consequences.”
Some Saudi social media users have suggested that the community security unit represents a return from the religious police but “without a long beard”.
But other public members welcomed this decision. “The reprimand on human trafficking is a good thing,” said Bandar, a 36 -year -old father who did not want to give his family name. “Let them clean the country.”
With the wave of new economic activities such as tourism, rapid social changes and the arrival of more foreign workers, the authorities found themselves faced with an apparent increase in addiction and prostitution.
Although the data is rare, anecdotal evidence has suggested that a certain softening of visa restrictions and the borders of women’s freedom allowed the sex trade.
The Ministry of the Interior said last month that the unit fighting “crimes that violate personal rights, focused on fundamental freedoms guaranteed by Sharia law and the kingdom’s legal system, or compromise individual dignity in any way”.
Analysts argue that the presentation of unity as an effort to protect freedoms and rights may indicate that the government wishes to pre -empt criticism from the defense groups of human rights and Western powers.
“As a rule, the framing of such announcements would be around security rather than human rights,” said Sultan Alamer, a main resident member of the New Lines Institute, based in Washington.
The kingdom is expected to receive a meticulous examination in the coming years when it is preparing to organize major international events, including the 2034 World Cup, and seeks to attract foreign investments.
