By Thomas Murphy
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – On October 27, Saudi police arrested Tariq al-Mubarak, a columnist who criticized the country’s ban on women drivers.  The arrest followed an October 26 protest of the driving ban, during which at around sixty women got behind the wheel.

On October 6, Tariq al-Mubarak wrote an opinion article that is titled “It’s Time to Change Women’s Place in the Arab World.”  The article, available here, supported women’s rights generally, but education, freedom to travel, and marriage were specifically mentioned as areas for reform.  Al-Mubarak, a young schoolteacher, is also a member of a core group that has supported the right of women to drive.

He was called to the Interior Ministry’s Criminal Investigation Department on Sunday on the pretext that a car was stolen.  However, when he arrived he was interrogated about his involvement in the “Women2Drive” campaign, the activist group behind the driving protest.  Human Rights Watch and local activists report that al-Mubarak remains in custody and does not have access to a lawyer or family.

The police have also fined and harassed some of the women that participated in the protest by driving.  Fines were typically around 300 Saudi riyals ($80 USD) and many of the women and their male guardians were forced to sign a pledge stating they would respect the laws in the future.  Days after the protest, police cars remained outside of the homes of some participants.

The activists responsible for the “Women2Drive” campaign have reportedly been followed over the last few days and are preparing for the possibility of arrest.  They have put contingency plans in place and have provided phone numbers to journalists and human rights organizations in the event they are arrested.

The activists called for women specifically with international driver’s licenses to take part in the October 26 protest.  The campaign began in 2011 and was started by Saudi women with goal having the ban on women drivers repealed.

Human Rights Watch has called for an end to the mistreatment of the activists associated with “Women2Drive” and announced their support of the group’s mission.

“Saudi authorities are retaliating against people who want a very basic right for women, the right to get behind the wheel and drive themselves where they want to go,” said Joe Stork, Human Rights Watch Deputy Middle East director. “The authorities should end the driving ban and stop harassing people for supporting women’s rights.”

For further information, please see:

Al Jazeera – Saudi writer held for backing women drivers – 30 October 2013

Human Rights Watch – Saudi Arabia: Free Journalist who Supported Women Driving – 30 October 2013

Reuters – Saudi women say they will keep pushing for right to drive – 28 October 2013

Guardian – Saudi Arabia’s women hold day of action to change driving laws – 25 October 2013

Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi women campaigning for the right to drive in Saudi Arabia have received support from a group of Saudi comedians whose satirical view of the ban forbidding women in Saudi Arabia from getting behind the wheel of a car continues to draw international attention to the campaign for women’s rights.

Their video, No Woman, No Drive, is a satirical play on the Bob Marley classic song “No Woman, No Cry,” has gone viral YouTube, receiving more than 6.5 million views since it was posted on Saturday.

One of the video’s creators, Saudi Arabian performer Hisham Fageeh, is well known in the Arab-speaking world for his comic videos on YouTube, which often contain a social commentary.

The tune mocks the country’s ultraconservative restrictions that ban women from operating vehicle and require them to be in the company of a male guardian for several activities. The video also mocked the claim by one Saudi cleric that if women were allowed to operate a vehicle it could damage their ovaries and affect reproduction. Sheikh Saleh Al-Loheidan’s, a leading figure in Saudi Arabia, argued that “if a woman drives a car, it could have a negative physiological impact … Medical studies show that it would automatically affect a woman’s ovaries and that it pushes the pelvis upward.” He argued that the ban prevents reproductive problems.  Al-Loheidan said, “We find that for women who continuously drive cars, their children are born with varying degrees of clinical problems.”

Well known on the Arabic-speaking web for his funny YouTube videos, which often contain a degree of social commentary, Hisam Fageeh has posted a new video spoofing his country’s practice of forbidding women from attaining driver’s licenses. Fageeh parodies the Bob Marley song “No woman, no cry” with lyrics lampooning Saudi Arabia’s car-related gender restrictions, which Saudi women are challenging this week with a mass protest drive.

Fageeh continued to mock the country’s ban on Monday after at least 60 women took to the road in protest of the ban on over the weekend. In a post on Twitter, he jokingly suggested that young, unpredictable, teenage male drivers are more of a danger to the public than adult women drivers. He tweeted “Just got hit by another car driven by a teenage male while doing a phone interview about #NoWomanNoDrive” with the hashtags #NoTeenagerNoDrive, #Saudi and #Irony.

Tamador Alyami, an activist and blogger in the city of Jeddah, who drove last week, said she appreciated the video and appreciated the satirical comedy at this stressful time for the women’s rights movement. She said, “It cracked me up. I laughed, and I shared it with everybody. I wanted it to have the same effect on them because it eased up a lot of the tension I was feeling.”

For further information, please see:

CNN International – Saudi Cleric Warns Driving Could Damage Women’s Ovaries – 30 October 2013

Huffington Post UK – Saudi Comic’s ‘No Woman, No Drive’ Video Goes Viral – 30 October 2013

The New York Times – Saudi Men Sing ‘No Woman, No Drive’ In Mock Homage To Ban On Female Drivers – 30 October 2013

The Daily Beast – ‘No Woman, No Drive’: Behind the Viral Video – 28 October 2013

The Washington Post – ‘No Woman, No Drive’: Saudi Arabian music video spoofs ban on female drivers – 27 October 2013

 

 

 

By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

BEIRUT, Lebanon–Two people were killed Monday in northern Lebanon in a fight that broke out between supporters and opponents of the Syrian regime and the Lebanese military, which is struggling to control tensions and prevent outbreaks of violence stemming from the Syrian civil war.

Monday’s violence was the latest in a series of clashes that have broken out since last Tuesday. 17 people have been killed and more than 100 people wounded since the violence began last week. The fighting broke out in the Bab al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen districts of Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest city located about 30 miles from the Syrian border.

Communities in Lebanon are deeply divided between supporters and opponents of the Assad regime. Supporters of the Hezbollah movement within Lebanon have sent fighters and resources into Syria to support the Assad regime while Sunni organizations have also sent fighters and smuggled weapons and other resources into Syria to support Syrian Rebels.

Lebanon’s interim government deployed the Lebanese army to Tripoli on Monday in response to last week’s violence. The conflict in Syria has exacerbated tensions in Lebanese communities, supporters of Hezbollah and supporters of Sunni Organizations have accused each other of using the city of Tripoli as a base for organizing and sending, fighters, weapons and other resources across the border into Syria. Lebanon’s acting Prime Minister Najib Mikati said that “security forces will take every step to put an end to the violence and chaos.”

The sudden influx of Syrian refugees into Lebanese communities, including Tripoli, has raised community tensions and placed new strains on the state. Syrian refugees now make up a quarter of Lebanon’s population. The refugee crisis has spread the countries institutional systems thin and raised tensions in the region.

While Lebanon has remained in relative state of peace following the 2006 civil war the influx of Syrian refugees into the state since the start of the Syrian civil war has put new strains on state resources and has sparked a rise in tensions between communities.

By this time last year 300,000 Syrian Refugees has crossed the border into Lebanon. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) expects that by early next year, two million refugees will have crossed into Lebanon. One in four people in Lebanon is a Syrian refugee, the sudden influx of people into the Lebanon population has left rescues stretched thin in the state, and the crime rate has increased by 30% over the past year.

Lebanon is still struggling to support 400,000 Palestinian refugees who remain in the country, many of whom are livening in desperate poverty and in communities where violence is common. As a result of this bitter experience Lebanon has so far failed to provide basic services to Syrian refugees, unlike Jordan, which has accepted a large number so Syrian refugees, Lebanon has so far refused to provide refugee camps. Shelters cannot have more than a basic timber-and-plastic frame, so far the building of permanent and semi-permanent structures by refugees has been prohibited.

For more information please see:

Al Jazeera – Lebanon army deploys amid violence in Tripoli – 28 October 2013

Reuters – Two die in northern Lebanon in spillover from Syria war – 28 October 2013

The Guardian – Lebanon suffers under the strain of a refugee crisis now out of control – 26 October 2013

Jerusalem Post – Syrian civil war spreads to Lebanese city of Tripoli – 27 October 2013

By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – More than 60 Saudi women claimed to have answered the call for women across the country to defy the state law forbidding women from driving in Saudi Arabia. This display of civil disobedience took place on Saturday, when activists for women’s rights across Saudi Arabia called on women to get behind the wheel of a car in defiance of the ultra-conservative state’s discriminatory laws.

The campaign for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, particularly the campaign for the right of women to drive, has gained international attention on social media after numerous Saudi women filmed themselves driving in open defiance of the law and posted the videos to YouTube.

Saudi authorities stopped five women who were spotted driving in Riyadh. Fawaz Al-Meeman, an assistant spokesmen for the Riyadh police, said, “each case was dealt with accordingly.” He explained that the women were not taken to police stations. Instead, they were detained in their vehicles until their male guardians arrived at the scene, at which point they were released into the custody of their guardians.

Mai Al-Swayan posted a video to YouTube showing her driving from her home to a nearby grocery store in defiance of the law. She said, “I drove on the highway and was noticed by a couple of cars but they were fine with it.”

While Riyadh police did not take any women to police stations for breaking the law banning women from driving, that was not the case in other cities. In Jeddah, photographer Samia El-Moslimany said she was taken into custody for having driven a car. She said she was taken to a police station where another woman was being detained for having driven a car.

Saudi Arabia’s spokesman for the Interior Ministry Mansour Al-Turki said Saturday was a “normal day, just like every Saturday,” and said that he was not aware of any violations to the driving law, but regional police spokesmen said that if violations of the ban on women driving did occur, they would be dealt with. “Not just on the 26th. Before and after. At all times.”

The Interior Ministry issued a warning earlier in the week in response to the calls of activists women who openly defy the law. The warning was issued to women caught driving as well as anyone taking part in demonstrations.

Adam Coogle, a Saudi Arabia researcher for Human Rights Watch said the discriminatory driving laws in Saud Arabia are shameful and that the Saudi Interior Ministry is trying to “deflate the momentum” behind the activists campaign through “direct, individual intimidation.”

There is not a specific traffic law that prohibits women from driving in Saudi Arabia, but religious edicts are often interpreted to mean women are not allowed to operate a vehicle.

Sheikh Saleh Al-Loheidan, a prominent religious figure in Saudi Arabia, claimed that driving can have a negative impact on a women’s ovaries. He claimed that “medical studies show that it would automatically affect a woman’s ovaries and that it pushes the pelvis upward.”

For more information please see:

Al Jazeera – Saudi Women Defy Driving Ban across Country – 27 October 2013

CNN – Saudi Arabia Women Defy Authorities Over Female Driving Ban – 26 October 2013

CNN – Why Saudi Arabia Can’t Ban Women from Driving Forever – 25 October 2013

CNN – Saudi Cleric Warns Driving Could Damage Women’s Ovaries – 30 September 2013