2017–2020 Qatif unrest
ongoing civil unrest in the Qatif region of Saudi Arabia
The 2017–2020 Qatif unrest was a phase of conflict in the Qatif region of Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia, between Saudi security forces and the local Shia community, that arose sporadically starting in 1979, including a series of protests and repression during the 2011–12 Saudi Arabian protests.
This phase of the conflict began after an incident on 12 May 2017, when a child and a Pakistani man were shot and killed. The detention of Qatif human rights activist Israa al-Ghomgham and her husband and the possible beheading of al-Ghomgham as the first Saudi woman to be executed for her human rights activities gained international attention during 2018. On 31 January 2019, the Saudi authorities confirmed in a public statement that they would not seek the imposition of the death penalty against al-Ghomgham.
Background
On 15 October 2014, Nimr al-Nimr was sentenced to death by the Specialised Criminal Court for "seeking 'foreign meddling' in Saudi Arabia, 'disobeying' its rulers and taking up arms against the security forces".
Said Boumedouha of Amnesty International stated that the death sentence was part of a campaign by the authorities in Saudi Arabia to crush all dissent, including those defending the rights of the Kingdom's Shi'a Muslim community.
Nimr al-Nimr's brother, Mohammad al-Nimr, tweeted information about the death sentence and was arrested on the same day. The head of Iran's armed forces warned Saudi Arabia that it would "pay dearly" if it carried out the execution.
In March 2015 the Saudi Arabian appellate court upheld the death sentence against al-Nimr. On 25 October 2015, the Supreme Religious Court of Saudi Arabia rejected al-Nimr's appeal against his death sentence.
The public source identifies “2017–2020 Qatif unrest” as ongoing civil unrest in the Qatif region of Saudi Arabia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Qatif, unrest and ongoing.
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This entry incorporates text from “2017–2020 Qatif unrest” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.