Saudi Arabia policies are enormously hypocritical. They discriminate against 10 percent of their own population, the Shiites, while saying they are intervening in Syria for more democracy, journalist Pepe Escobar told RT.

RT: There have been protests since 2011 in Saudi Arabia. There have been many arrests since then too, but there hasn’t been much global media coverage of this. Why do you think that is the case?

Pepe Escobar: We should break down the strategy of the House of Saud. Basically it’s carrots and stick. Carrots in the form of a $60 billion handout program by King Abdullah at the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2011. The Saudis were horrified by the beginning of the Arab Spring in neighboring Bahrain. So they bribed their own subjects.