al-Awamia

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Coordinates: 26 ° 35 ′ 27.9 ″  N , 49 ° 58 ′ 48.7 ″  O Al-Awamia ( Arabic العوامية, DMG al-ʿAwāmīya ) is a Saudi town with around 25,500 inhabitants in the al-Qatif area (administrative district) of the province of Ash-Sharqiyya in the east of the country. It can be easily reached via an expressway, and the Dammam airport air traffic hub is not far.

history

The residents of al-Awamia are Shiites. They came under the rule of Sunni Wahhabis , who ruthlessly enforced their religious norms , in 1913 as a result of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the course of the conquest of much of the Arabian Peninsula by Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud . Again and again the Shiites protested.

According to Toby Matthiesen , an Islamic scholar who teaches at Oxford and who conducts research on the Saudi Shiites, al-Awamia has become the center of the Shiite opposition in the recent history of Saudi Arabia .

During the “Arab Spring” in Saudi Arabia , the preacher Nimr al-Nimr from al-Awamia became the spokesman for the Shiites and called for demonstrations for more democracy. On October 5, 2011, at least 14 people were killed in clashes between police and Shiite people in the city. Nimr al-Nimr was arrested in 2012, sentenced to death and executed along with 46 other Shiites on January 2, 2016.

This led to an uprising in al-Awamia in the spring of 2017. In May 2017, the Saudi military and several police units advanced in armored vehicles and besieged the city. On May 10, bulldozers began demolishing around 500 historic houses in the old town of al-Mosawara. This should take away the area of ​​retreat from the insurgents. Eyewitnesses reported snipers and artillery fire and compared the situation to the war in Syria. It is estimated that around 20,000 residents of the city fled the massacres.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Monika Bolliger, Beirut: Riots among Saudi Arabia's Shiites | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . ( nzz.ch [accessed December 29, 2019]).
  2. ^ Nicola Slawson: Saudi execution of Shia cleric sparks outrage in Middle East . In: The Guardian . January 2, 2016, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed November 15, 2017]).
  3. ↑ Tomas Avenarius : Riyadh announces iron fist policy. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . October 5, 2011, accessed October 6, 2011 .
  4. ↑ Violence erupts Following Saudi demolition of historic Shia homes . In: The new Arab , June 27, 2017.
  5. ^ Christian Weisflog: Saudi Arabia's internal war. Riyadh is suppressing the Shiites with a hard hand in their own country. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of July 14, 2017, p. 4.
  6. ↑ 'Almost like war zone': Saudi 'renovation' of Shiite town decried as attempt to drive residents out . In: RT International . August 10, 2017 ( rt.com [accessed November 15, 2017]).
  7. ↑ Saudi man killed trying help citizens flee Awamiya: sources . In: Reuters . August 3, 2017 ( reuters.com [accessed November 15, 2017]).