JEDDAH: The National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) in Makkah province has demanded the Ministry of Social Affairs take immediate steps to improve the conditions in juvenile centers, an official said on Saturday.
“The ministry should strive to improve the conditions and quality of service in juvenile centers. The NSHR has received many complaints about sad incidents in reformatories in the past years,” said NSHR spokesman in Makkah province Hussein Al-Shareef on Saturday.
He said NSHR also wrote to the ministry’s branch in Makkah for the details about the reported transfer of some inmates of girl’s juvenile center to Tabuk.
Commenting on last week’s rioting by young girls at the center, Al-Shareef said the NSHR learned that the incidents in the center were part of a struggle between two groups: a group siding with the administration and the another group that called for defending their rights.
“In fact, we noticed in a visit to the center a few years ago unpleasant things, and we then discussed the matter with the officials of the Social Affairs Ministry,” he said.
“Those defects were mainly crude methods of punishing girls such as denying them visiting rights, tasking them with cleaning the facility, keeping them under scorching heat. We also noticed that the girls were not given proper training and entered into rehabilitation programs. There were also cases of several girls not being released after completing their time because their relatives did not come to claim them.”
He added that shortly before the riot, women members of the NSHR visited the place to know if the conditions had improved. They learned that the same shortcomings they recorded during their last visit still existed. There was no sign of making any efforts to improve them. It pointed to administrative problems, he said.
“Now we, after the latest developments, have prepared a report to be submitted to the Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal with recommendations to make radical changes to the juvenile homes in the province,” he said.
The report stresses the need to appoint a neutral committee to investigate the riot.
