Woman held after asking Saudi policemen for directions

This story appeared in the Gulf News. While women in rural parts of Saudi Arabia do drive, it appears that this female driver's mistake was assuming that the police in the area would turn a 'blind eye' if she asked them directions. A link to the story is here, and the text is below.

Vehicle was carrying teenagers from nearby summer camp in Saudi Arabia

• By Habib Toumi, Bureau Chief
• Published: 15:11 July 7, 2013

Manama: A woman in Saudi Arabia who was not supposed to drive was arrested after she pulled up her van next to a police patrol to ask for directions.

The traffic policemen in Taif province could not believe the situation and proceeded to question the woman and search the vehicle in which they found 15 girls, aged between 14 and 18, merrily singing and dancing, local news site Sabq reported on Sunday.

The driver, believed to be in her 40s, said that the girls were from the Red Sea city of Jeddah and that they were spending time at a summer camp in the area.

She was detained pending the arrival of a male relative to discuss her case, Sabq said.

Women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, even though there is no legal text that bans the practice.

Attempts to break through the deep-anchored traditions have failed to introduce any changes.

Women were this year empowered politically when they were given 30 of the 150 seats in the Advisory Council in a landmark decision by King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz who has championed several pro-women reforms since he assumed power in August 2005.

Saudi man fined for letting sister drive family car in Al Qateef

 

Story from Gulf News. A link to the story is here, and the story is pasted in below.

 Traffic police book woman for driving without license

• By Habib Toumi, Bureau Chief
• Published: 09:13 June 30, 2013

Manama: A Saudi man was fined SR900 for letting his sister drive the family car.

The woman, 23, was arrested by a police patrol in Al Qateef, in the Eastern Province, for driving, even though her brother, 17, was riding with her.

The traffic police impounded the car for seven days, asked the young woman, who works at a local hotel, to sign a pledge not to “repeat the violation” and booked her for breaking the rules by driving without a driving licence, Saudi daily Al Sharq reported.

The case will be reviewed by an interior ministry agency.

 
Women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia even though there is no legal text that bans the practice.

Attempts to change the situation and lift the restrictions have been fiercely resisted by conservatives who saw in it a source of immense social and moral problems.

In November last year, Nassima Al Sadah became the third Saudi woman, after Manal Al Sharif and Samar Badawi, to file a lawsuit over the ban for women to apply for driving licences in Saudi Arabia.

In December, Dr Thurayyah Al Aredh, writing for the Saudi Gazette, defended the right of women to drive, arguing that Saudi women would be “a lot safer” driving themselves.

Dr Thurayyah said that, although she held a driving licence that she acquired while she was a university student abroad, she was unable to drive in her own country.

“I have not been able to use this driving licence since I returned home,” she wrote. “Three decades have passed with me waiting hopelessly for the Interior Ministry to reach a decision allowing women to drive. Such a decision will rid us of the need to employ foreign drivers and live under their mercy. Women driving cars is not a fashion trend or an ostentatious phenomenon, but a real and pressing need.”

Dr Thurayyah said that “importing of drivers has become more perilous than the recruitment of housemaids.”

“As soon as the drivers know our streets, they will not fail to find those who will give them all kinds of criminal advice,” she wrote.

“Time has come to do away with the millions of the foreign drivers in our country. Let Saudi women drive and the problem will be solved forever. By driving our own cars, we will save a lot of resources for the economy. We will be a lot safer as well and we will sleep in peace and security,” she wrote.

Wajeha Al-Huwaider sentenced to ten months in prison

Saudi women's right activist (and activist on the driving issue as well), Wajeha Al-Huwaider has been sentenced to ten months in prison for helping a Canadian woman who was being abused by her husband. She and her co-defendant are appealing the sentence. A link to the story is here,  and the text is printed below.


Story by Katha Pollitt in The Nation - June 19, 2013

Wajeha Al-Huwaider with Phellicia Dell, Rebecca Lolosoli, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Tina Brown (PRNewsFoto/The Daily Beast)

Terrible news from Saudi Arabia: After proceedings that stretched out over nearly a year and violated many legal norms, Wajeha Al-Huwaider, the prominent Saudi Human rights activist and co-organizer of protests against the ban on women drivers, has been sentenced to ten months in prison, along with her colleague Fawzia Al-Oyouni. (I interviewed Al-Huwaider here.) After they serve their terms, both will be banned from travel for two years.

Their crime? It’s a little complicated. They were accused of kidnapping and trying to help Nathalie Morin, a Canadian woman married to a Saudi, flee the country in June 2011. Morin, who has said her husband locks her in the house and is abusive, has been trying for eight years to leave Saudi Arabia with her three children. (There’s a so-far-unsuccessful campaign, spearheaded by her mother, to get the Canadian government to intervene.) Al-Huwaider says they were responding to a frantic text message from Morin, who said her husband had gone away for a week and left her locked in the house without enough food or drinkable water. When they arrived at the house with groceries, they were arrested.

The two activists were found not guilty of kidnapping, but the judge convicted them of “Takhbib”—inciting a woman against her husband. Apparently helping an abused wife feed her children is a crime in Saudi Arabia. Can’t have that in a country where women need their male “guardian's” okay to travel, work, study or even undergo surgery, where fathers have automatic legal custody of children and the Koran, interpreted at the whim of judges, is the only legal code.
Al-Huwaider writes in an e-mail:

We will be banned from traveling for two years following our release. We will be trapped in this women’s prison—that is, Saudi Arabia—for 3 years.

This is the first time in Saudi legal history that a travel ban has been imposed in a social case. This proves that the decision has really come from the Minister of Internal Affairs, and that they planned to prevent us from engaging in any human rights activities.

From the first session I knew that it was going to be very bad and I was always expecting the worst, but I didn’t think that the judge would be this aggressive.

As I see it now, it was a ‘good catch’ for the Wahabi court to convict two liberal women who have been campaigning for years to promote equality and women’s rights.

Al-Huwaider and Al-Oyouni have a month to appeal. Muslims for Progressive Values, a Canadian group, is appealing to leaders in Canada and Saudi Arabia.

Americans can help them too:

Contact the Saudi ambassador and protest this absurd miscarriage of justice.
Contact President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry and urge them to speak out about Saudi human rights abuses and make a public statement about this case. Obama can be contacted here or here.

Contact your congressional representative and senators and urge them to push the president and State Department.

Human Rights Watch has more details.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where......

Blogger Editorial ----

So maybe we've been thinking about this issue all wrong. Perhaps we should be writing about how Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where ONLY MEN drive. Which would explain the high accident rate, the out-of-control traffic, and the crazy stunt driving. The latest example of this is the YouTube video of the guy sitting on the hood of a moving car, leaning on the windshield (in front of the driver's seat no less) texting. Take any country in the world - say Australia. If women were banned from driving, how long would it take before the drivers started driving out of control? They'd all be in competition, speeding, getting into fights, causing accidents. I think this sort of thing would happen anywhere that women aren't allowed on the roads.





To me, this video is just another proof that Saudi women need to get in their cars immediately and transform the city streets from race tracks and demolition derbies to avenues where families can travel safely. When women start driving, they will slow everything down.

Al Waleed wants Saudi women to drive cars

New statement from Prince Al Waleed bin Talal in support of women driving. Reported here in Emirates 24/7, and the text of the story below. I would add that not only would 500,000 foreign drivers leave the country, the salaries paid to them would be reinvested in the country and would help diversify the economy and hopefully encourage women to start more small businesses.

Prince says 500,000 foreign drivers will lose jobs if women are allowed to drive

By Staff Published Monday, May 27, 2013

Saudi billionaire Prince Al Waleed scoffed at his Gulf Kingdom’s long-standing ban on driving cars by women in a fresh brief Twitter call supporting an ongoing campaign by women in the world’s oil superpower to drive cars.

Al Waleed, a nephew of King Abdullah with a $20-billion investment empire, said allowing Saudi women to drive in the conservative Moslem country means nearly 500,000 foreign private drivers, mostly Asians, would lose their jobs.

One of the world’s 30 richest persons, the Prince said he was surprised that the ban remains in force when a Saudi woman scaled Mount Everest last week and another became the country’s first female passenger aircraft pilot.

He was referring to Raha Mubarak who was the first Saudi woman to reach Everest and Hanadi Al Hindi, the first Saudi woman to become a commercial flight pilot last month.

“Hanadi piloted an aircraft and Raha reached Everest but the Saudi woman still cannot drive her own car,” he said.

Women drivers would cause crashes – Saudi Grand Mufti

This story appeared in Arabian Business. You can link to it here, and the text is below.

 By Daniel Shane  Monday, 27 May 2013 12:44 PM

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Allowing Saudi Arabian women to drive would lead to more accidents on roads, according to the austere Gulf kingdom’s highest religious authority.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that prohibits women from driving, as well as imposing a number of other restrictions on areas including employment and travel.

“If women knew the evils and consequences of driving they would realise it is in their interest and society’s interest that they do not drive,” Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Alsheikh said, according to Saudi news site An7a, as reported by RiyadhBureau.com.

“Women driving would lead to more accidents. When women are in danger, they don’t know how to act. How are they going to deal with accidents?”

In 2012, more than 600 women petitioned Saudi’s King Abdullah to allow women to drive in the country, a
year after a group of women’s-rights activists launched the Women2Drive campaign.

Prominent figures such as Princess Ameerah Al Taweel have also spoken in support of women lobbying to overturn the driving ban.

Women’s rights in the Gulf’s most populous country, which practises an austere version of Sharia Law, are a frequent topic of discussion in the world’s media.
Females in Saudi Arabia are prohibited from taking up employment or leaving the country without a male guardian’s permission.

In recent years though there have been indications that absolute monarch King Abdullah has pursued a reformist agenda in terms of women’s rights.

In 2011, it was announced that women would be permitted to vote and stand in municipal elections from 2015, while in January 2013 30 women were appointed to the country’s legislative Shoura Council.
Some female members of the Shoura Council have said they will lobby for the driving ban to be lifted, although there is not yet a timeframe for when the issue will be discussed.

It was also recently announced that women would be allowed to practice law in a professional environment for the first time.

Oman denies proposing ban on women wearing veil while driving across GCC

The following is from the Gulf News. A link to the story is here, and the text is below. It was recently reported that the idea of banning women from wearing a face veil (showing only the eyes) was being discussed for adoption throughout the GCC countries - the Arab Gulf countries including Oman and Saudi Arabia. It is already illegal to do so in Oman, as per the article below.

No plans to impose a ban on women wearing veil while driving, says official

• By Sunil K. Vaidya, Bureau Chief Published: 15:44 May 26, 2013

Muscat: Oman has not proposed any such ban for the GCC recently, as reported in regional media, a top police official has said.The country has had a ban on driving with a face veil for some time.

In Oman, wearing a [face veil] while driving is already a traffic violation and it is working fine, so there’s no reason for us [Oman] to propose the same at the GCC meet,” Brigadier Mohammad Bin Awadh Al Rawas, Director General of Traffic with the Royal Oman Police (ROP), who attended the meeting of the traffic heads from the GCC member states in Jeddah last week, told Gulf News on Sunday.

Saudi media reported last week that Oman had proposed at the Jeddah meet banning women from driving while wearing the face veil that is worn by some Muslim women. The veil covers the entire face, leaving an opening for the eyes. Al Rawas expressed surprise at the reports, saying the ban was not new in Oman.

Meanwhile, Brigadier Al Rawas said that traffic accident-related fatalities were gradually coming down in the country following a slew of measures taken by the Traffic Department since the beginning of this year.

“The awareness is increasing and at the same time the deterrents are also working,” he said.

According to latest statistics released by the ROP, in the first 75 days of 2013 fatalities on roads had come down by 15 per cent. This year 145 people were killed in the fist two and half months against 170 during the same period last year.