Omani human rights advocate 'forcibly disappeared', rights group says

The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) on Friday said that a prominent Omani human rights advocate is believed to have been "forcibly disappeared" by the country's Internal Security Service (ISS).

Talib al-Saedi is said to have been called in to the ISS Special Branch in Sohar, Oman's largest city along the north coast, on 30 November and has not been heard from since, according to the statement from GCHR.

Saedi has not been permitted to contact a lawyer or his family, GCHR said.

The organisation is calling for his immediate release, and a guarantee of safety for all rights activists "online and offline", in an environment free of "judicial harassment" in Oman. 

Saedi most recently spoke out on the lack of a government assistance programme that could have prevented the deaths of a family of six in al-Amarat district who perished in their own home from carbon monoxide poisoning. 

Others had joined him in demanding accountability, but Saedi was already on the radar of the security services. 

He had been arrested twice before. First, in July 2014, for "calling for a peaceful march in solidarity with the Palestinian people", GCHR said, and again in March 2015, "in relation to his activities on social media networks", the Ireland-based group Freedom Defenders noted on its website. 

GCHR said Saedi's work was always "peaceful human rights activities and... online calls for freedom and reform in Oman". 

As elsewhere in the Gulf, a mixture of repression and increased state spending successfully quells discontent. However, human rights campaigners and independent bloggers have continued to fall foul of lese-majesty censorship laws, which forbid criticism of the sultan and his government, leading to the arrest of dozens of activists and journalists since 2011.

Amnesty International has long maintained that Oman's freedom of expression is "unduly restricted... sometimes prosecuting journalists and online activists". 

It acknowledges that while there has been "a very gradual opening of the political process" in recent years, "discrimination against women continued in law and practice".