Saudi Shias have held a small protest in the kingdom's oil-producing eastern province, close to Gulf Arab neighbour Bahrain where unrest has cost six lives, local Shia sources said on Saturday. They said a group of Shias staged a protest on Thursday in the town of Awamiya, near the Saudi Shia centre of Qatif on the Gulf coast, to demand the release of fellow Shias held in prison without trial.
Top Opec exporter Saudi Arabia fears that unrest in Bahrain, where majority Shias are protesting against the Sunni government, might spread to its Shia minority who mostly live in the eastern province, the source of Saudi oil wealth. Shia website Rasid.com said protesters gathered in the centre of the small town but stayed silent and did not hold up any posters to avoid provoking the authorities.
Saudi Arabia applies an austere Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam and minority Shias say that, while their situation has improved under reforms launched by King Abdullah, they still face restrictions in landing senior government jobs. The government denies these charges. Awamiya, a town visibly less affluent than the rest of the country, was the scene of protests for weeks in 2009 after police launched a search for firebrand Shia preacher Nimr al-Nimr, who breached a taboo to suggest in a sermon that Shias could one day seek their own separate state.
The threat, which analysts say was unprecedented since the 1979 Iranian revolution provoked anti-Saudi protests, followed clashes between the Sunni religious police and Shia pilgrims in the holy city of Madina. Since then Saudi Shias say the situation has calmed down but they are still waiting for many reform promises to be carried out.
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