(Riyadh -- Aafaq – Special)  - A group of Saudi women has described the Saudi legal regime as a system that justifies injustice against women.  Demanding legal reform in the Kingdom, they have pointed to several recent, notorious legal judgments:  the forcible separation of a wife from her husband, the prosecution of a young woman who was raped, and the marrying of a 16 year old girl to a prisoner sentenced to death without her consent.  [Full Story in Arabic]

They have issued their appeal in a document bearing the title:  "Has the Time come for this Injustice to end?  A Campaign of Solidarity with the Women of the Kingdom of Silence! – Saudi Arabia," and Aafaq has obtained a copy.  In their document they present the cases of "three young Saudi women who are representative of all of the women of Saudi Arabia, and any Saudi woman may be subjected to the same violations, because she does not have the right to determine her own destiny.  A man has control over all of her affairs, and all of her private and public decisions."

The authors of the declaration attest that "the Saudi woman has become the slave of the law, and are bought and sold in the slave market."  They ask, "How long will women in Saudi Arabia remain puppets in the hands of the men – even if the men are criminals or murderers, and convicts in prison?  How long will Saudi judges treat women as if they were created to be dallied with by men? 

The text of the declaration reads as follows:

Three young Saudi women have faced forcible and vile fates because of the laws applied in the courts of Saudi Arabia.  The first case is the case of Fatima Suleiman, which has no explanation other than the oppression of women that is permitted, justified and intended in the Saudi justice system.  

Fatima is a married women with two children, who was forced under the authority of her half-brothers (not brothers by the same father and mother) to be divorced from her husband whom she loved, and her family broken up because of the so-called "lack of equality" (i.e., that her husband was not from a family of equal or greater status than hers) although her husband belonged to a respectable family. 

Fatima rejected this injustice and refused to return to live with her brothers.  She preferred to remain behind the walls of the prison, in the nursery with her infant, in order to say to all the world, "I am a human being, and I have the right to choose my husband, who belongs to me, and to make a family."  Fatima was deprived of her husband and her daughter, and has not seen them for more than a year.  

The second young woman is 19 years of age, and known as the "girl of Qatif."  She was raped by a viscious gang of seven men.  When the crime was revealed, and the security apparatus identified the criminals, the young woman was counted as a criminal along with them, under the pretext that she was accompanied by an unrelated young man in a public place. 

The crime of rape was completely overlooked, and she was sentenced to 6 months in prison and 200 lashes.  This is "justice" in their custom and their Islamic law.  The victim was converted into a criminal, because she was present in a place where males – despicable rapists – were present.  Now the young woman is awaiting another appeal of the sentence, but all of the evidence proves that justice is invisible in this case. 

The third case is that of a young woman from Ta'if, 16 years old and a minor under the law.  She was a student in secondary school, and was forced into marriage with a murderer under sentence of death.  Her father, Muhammad Al-Zahrani, a criminal sentenced to prison, arranged the marriage. He sold his daughter to the killer, and the marriage was contracted and celebrated by the prisoners in the prison in Ta'if. 

Every joy was permitted to bless this crime.  The killer asked the prison administration to provide him with a room and a chamber for the couple, so that he could exercise his legal right as a new groom. And the director of the prison provided the prisoner with a room four times a month, an exceptional privilege that was not previously provided to a prisoner. What future awaits this girl?  Her life was delivered from the hand of one criminal, "her father," to the hand of another criminal, "her husband."

These three young Saudi women represent all the women of Saudi Arabia.  Any Saudi woman is exposed to these violations, because she does not possess the right to self determination.  Men govern all of her affairs and all of her decisions, private and public. 

When guardianship over a woman is given to a Saudi man, the woman is stripped of all feelings of safety and tranquility.  And when the man who conducts her affairs is angry with her, she becomes a woman whose future is unknowable and very bleak. 

Have Saudi officials been struck deaf and lost their sight and understanding, not to comprehend all of these flagrant violations against women?  How long will women continue to plea for and demand their right to life and security without anyone hearing?  Has the time come for this injustice to end? 

by:  A number of women of Saudi Arabia

bgubrail@yahoo.dk

2007 / 11 / 19