Torture, reform and women's rights in Saudi Arabia Women are being tortured for demanding basic rig

Torture, reform and women's rights in Saudi Arabia

Women are being tortured for demanding basic rights in 'reformist' Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Saudi Arabia.


Today, every critical voice in Saudi Arabia is undoubtedly under threat, but the Saudi women's rights activists are feeling the pressure the most, writes Al-Khamri.[File:AP]
Today, every critical voice in Saudi Arabia is undoubtedly under threat, but the Saudi women's rights activists are feeling the pressure the most, writes Al-Khamri.[File:AP]
more on Saudi Arabia



On November 20, Amnesty International published a report detailing how Saudi women's rights activists, arbitrarily arrested in a government crackdown earlier this year, have faced sexual harassment and torture during their interrogation. Citing three separate testimonies, the rights group said the detainees were held in solitary confinement and faced repeated electrocution and flogging, leaving some of them unable to stand or walk. One of the activists reportedly tried to take her own life repeatedly inside the prison.

Saudi Arabia has a long history of forcefully silencing women who dare to stand up to the kingdom's unjust laws and patriarchal gender norms. Almost four decades ago in 1990, 47 brave Saudi women were harshly punished by the authorities for participating in a major driving-ban protest - they were arrested and their passports were taken away. Some of them were even sacked from their jobs or expelled from their schools. But until recently, despite being abused, harassed and at times jailed, most Saudi women's rights activists were managing to avoid the full force of the regime's violence due to their high socioeconomic status. Their skin colour and religious and tribal identity were also playing a role in determining the level of abuse and harassment they were subjected once they were arrested. While undocumented female migrants and poor, underprivileged Saudi citizens were treated abominably in the kingdom's prisons, Saudi activists from privileged backgrounds were being dealt with with relative restraint.

Amnesty International's latest report, however, reveals that even a privileged background can no longer protect women's rights activists from the brutality of the country's current leadership.
This move towards indiscriminate oppression is a natural expansion of the kingdom's de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's (MBS) one-dimensional approach to all forms of dissent and opposition.


For years, the Saudi regime has been making a clear distinction between individuals campaigning for social rights without directly challenging or blaming the political system, and individuals who are demanding, or supporting the calls for, holistic political reform and constitutional monarchy. While the regime usually allowed some limited and informal breathing space for the former, the members of the latter group always faced systemic and relentless repression. This is not the case any longer. Under MBS' oppressive and unilateral rule, regardless of their nature and aims, all ground-up efforts to bring about change and social reform are being swiftly stifled. In the eyes of the current leadership, every single organic, bottom-up rights movement is a threat to the authoritarian system - a threat to the survival of the pseudo-reformist, despotic rule of the young crown prince.

. . . .


https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/torture-reform-women-rights-saudi-arabia-181129172925565.html