JIZAN, 19 April 2005 — Anti-social elements have turned cemeteries in Abu Aresh province, near Jizan, into a liquor den and a hiding place for stolen goods and kidnapped women, Al-Watan newspaper reported.
The unidentified trespassers started their scandalous activities by dealing in alcohol and qat, a narcotic leaf, at the cemeteries. Some cemeteries were converted into football fields and garbage dumping sites, the paper added.
Al-Watan reporters visited Abu Aresh’s unguarded cemeteries and came across some of the anti-social elements who violate the sanctity of the place. The visit followed thousands of complaints from local residents who were fed up with the trespassers and who could do nothing to stop them.
The reporters found that the trespassers had turned some of the cemeteries into residential units where they held wild parties at night with alcohol and qat. When their happy hours are over everyone takes a suitable grave to sleep on, after covering it with hardboard boxes and unmindful of poisonous snakes and insects that abound in the grass fields around them.
Each of the ten cemeteries has been defiled in the same manner.
According to newspaper reports, a cemetery dweller tried to rape an Asian maid working in a nearby house after she was forcibly seized from a supermarket where she was shopping.
Abu Shathly, a Saudi who lives near one of the cemeteries, said that drunken trespassers are known to have died in fights and that robbery by the miscreants was commonplace.
Police units patrol Abu Aresh day and night after many people complained about the criminals. Police said that the absence of security guards or police patrols made the area a safe haven for the trespassers who would take shelter at the cemeteries that are hidden by towering trees.
