Saudi Arabia: Women’s rights activist hasn’t been heard from for three months

A women’s rights activist detained in Saudi Arabia for a year and a half for her social media posts has lost all contact with the outside world, Amnesty International said this Wednesday. “Saudi Arabian authorities must immediately release Manahel al-Otaibi, the 29-year-old sports coach, human rights activist and blogger who has been forcibly disappeared since November,” the rights group said in a press release, a year after her imprisonment. .

“Prison authorities and other officials have cut off all contact with his family and the outside world and have refused to provide his family with information about his whereabouts and condition, despite their repeated requests,” he said, protesting against the NGO. “Shortly before we lost contact with her, Manakhel told us that she had been severely beaten by a fellow inmate,” her sister Fawzia said, as quoted in the press release.

“Any activity to promote women’s rights is criminalized”

Manahel al-Otaibi was arrested in November 2022 for posting messages challenging the kingdom’s male guardianship laws and for photographing herself without an abaya, a long, loose, body-covering dress that women must wear in public.

Last January, she appeared before judges for leading “a propaganda campaign aimed at encouraging young Saudi girls to denounce religious principles and rebel against the customs and traditions of Saudi society,” according to court documents seen by AFP at the time. . She was then transferred to the Specialized Criminal Court, a court created in 2008 to try terrorism-related cases. According to Amnesty International, the court is “known for holding unfair trials and handing down harsh sentences, including the death penalty” against political dissidents and human rights defenders. Last year, the kingdom executed 170 prisoners sentenced to death.

“This is the reality of the treatment of Saudi women that the authorities are trying to hide behind their media image. Any activity that promotes feminism and women’s rights is criminalized,” Fawazia further states that she went into exile from the United Kingdom to avoid the risk of being prosecuted in the same way as her sister.

Saudi Arabia, which is often accused of repressing dissidents, handed down very harsh prison sentences in August and September 2022 to two women who broadcast critical messages on social media. However, since 2018, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has pledged to work to “empower Saudi women”, but an analysis of legal texts carried out by Amnesty International on this stated desire shows that they “perpetuate the male guardianship system and codify discrimination against women in most aspects of family life.”

And justice is working on this too: last January, on January 5, 2023, the Specialized Criminal Court sentenced Salma al-Shebab, a doctoral student at the British University of Leeds and mother of two children, to 27 years in prison on appeal. 27 years travel ban for posting tweets in support of women’s rights. At first instance, she was sentenced to 34 years in prison. At the time of publication, his account X had 2,597 followers.