Saudi Arabia has arrested more than 50 people including sex workers and foreign nationals as police crack down on ‘immoral acts’.
The Ministry of Interior arrested 11 women into custody on prostitution charges, the Financial Times reports.
The newly established community security unit also detained dozens of foreigners on alleged offences in massage parlours and for forcing women and children into begging.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the creation of the new police unit to tackle ‘community security and human trafficking’.
Analysts allege the community security unit was formed in response to ‘notable increased activity’ related to sex and other alleged issues of morality.
For years, the kingdom has moved to loosen its social restrictions and moved to diversify the economy.
The government did announce a ‘public decency’ law in 2019, but it has not been strictly enforced, according to the newspaper.
Some locals have praised the new community security unit, claiming that ‘cracking down on human trafficking is a good thing’.
But others are comparing the unit to the country’s religious police force that until Prince Mohammed stripped much of its power in 2016 had enforced some of the strictest moral codes and gender segregation policies in the world.
The Ministry of Interior’s newly established community security unit has arrested more than 50 people including sex workers and foreign nationals as police crack down on ‘immoral acts’. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (pictured on March 11) ordered the creation of the new police unit to tackle ‘community security and human trafficking’
Some locals have compared the new unit to the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, (pictured in 2007) religious police force that until Prince Mohammed stripped much of its power in 2016 had enforced some of the strictest moral codes and gender segregation policies in the world
Saudi authorities are allegedly dealing with a rise in drug abuse and prostitution, according to the Financial Times.
Some experts – despite data being limited – have suggested easing visa restrictions and curbs on women’s liberty have enabled in the sex trade in Saudi Arabia.
They allege tourism, rapid social changes and the rising number of foreign workers in the country is yielding an increase in criminal activity.
The Saudi interior ministry last month framed the new unit as an effort to uphold personal rights, fundamental freedoms guaranteed by sharia law, the kingdom’s legal framework and individual dignity.
But some analysts are now claiming this positioning was merely an attempt to prevent criticism from human rights organizations and western governments.
‘Typically, the framing of such announcements would be around security rather than human rights,’ Sultan Alamer, a senior resident fellow at the Washington-based New Lines Institute, told the newspaper.
Khalid al-Sulaiman, a columnist for the semi-official Okaz Daily, suggests the unit was created in direct response to public displays of morality and online advertisements for illicit services.
He hailed Saudi Arabia for having a ‘special religious and social identity as the birthplace of Islam’ and in a piece last month, wrote that no one should ‘distort’ the kingdom’s image of ‘high-level moral and social values’.
‘If such immoral and illegal practices were previously done in secret, those who practice them today should never feel that they can appear in public without consequences,’ the columnist added.
