Saudi Arabia: Lebanese Christians deported

Twenty-seven Lebanese Christians - including several women and children - were recently arrested while celebrating the "Virgin Mary festival", as reported by Al-Masdar News on 27 August 2016. The religious police raided their homes near Mecca and arrested the Christians who were accused of "conducting Christian prayers" and being "in possession of Bibles". Their visas were taken and they were deported back to Lebanon. This move comes after the religious police were reported by Al-Jazeera on 14 April 2016 to have been "stripped of their powers to arrest". Henriette Kats, persecution analyst at World Watch Research, finds it surprising that the religious police arrested these Christians because of praying and possessing Bibles: "Travelers to Saudi Arabia have indicated that they can bring in Bibles for personal use. Of course this is only true for foreign Christians, as - contrary to reality - local authorities deny the existence of Saudi Christians in the country. This underlines the fact that the situation de jure and de facto can be very different in the Saudi kingdom. On the one hand the government recognizes the right of non-Muslims to worship in private, but on the other hand the religious police often do not respect this right. As the law is not formally codified, the legal situation of private religious practice remains vague, which makes the situation for Christians very uncertain as this incident shows."