PUBLIC MARKS with tag "saudi arabia"

RIYADH: India and Saudi Arabia on Sunday vowed to jointly combat terrorism and money laundering as they signed an extradition treaty and several agreements to raise their cooperation to a strategic partnership covering security, economic, energy and defence areas.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Christian Science Monitor is running the first article in an apparent series on Saudi Arabia. This installation looks at reforms, particularly those affecting youth, and covers issues ranging from a Rolling Stones logo on young women's abayas to Saudi 'death metal' rock bands, from the possibility of women's driving to the possibility of public cinemas opening this year. The piece is a good survey of the changes that are taking place despite conservative social pressures to maintain the status quo. It makes for good reading and I look forward to future pieces in the series.

Interesting piece from the UAE's Khaleej Times about Saudi governmental efforts to get facts about the conditions of Saudi society.

The Saudi government seeks to 're-educate' jihadists by showing them how they misinterpreted the Quran. A couple of interesting pieces on just how they go about it.

International Women's Day was celebrated on March the 8th all around the world. However, it seems that in some countries, women have very little rights and are constantly abused, raped and treated like second class citizens. This piece talks about the womans rights advocates arrested in Iran and the lashing of a woman in Saudi Arabia

Did you know that Saudi Arabia treats its women one barely noticeable notch above that of the brutal Taliban? Saudi women cannot vote. They are not allowed to drive. They cannot be admitted to a hospital or examined by a doctor or travel abroad or leave the house without the express permission and/or company of an immediate male family member, and of course they must, at all times, be covered from head to toe in black sackcloth and if they dare venture outside or break the fashion code in any way they could very well be arrested and jailed indefinitely and beaten and even killed, no questions asked. Political prisoners in Saudi Arabia are regularly tortured.