A Saudi woman identified as Shaimaa has been sentenced to 10 lashes for driving herself to the hospital. Two other women face similar trials and another woman was arrested Monday while driving.
According to Mashable, Shaimaa drove herself to the hospital in July seeking emergency medical attention because she was hemorrhaging, alone, without access to alternative transport.
There is no legal or religious law prohibiting women drivers in Saudi Arabia; the country’s de-facto ban on women drivers is the only of its kind in the world.
“This is completely unacceptable and certainly breaks laws and regulations as well as international treaties that Saudi Arabia has signed,” read a statement from MyRight2Dignity, a new initiative being organized in response to this persecution.
Shaimaa attended three “sessions” at the district court in Jeddah for her potentially life-saving actions before being sentenced with 10 lashes. She is appealing the verdict.
There had been no media coverage of the proceedings, according to MyRight2Dignity, and moreover the city newspaper Al Madina had gone as far as denying the trial in the first place.
Jeddah’s other major newspaper, Okaz, reported that she had to wait in a scorching room for three hours prior to at least one of the trial proceedings.
An internal Saudi Women2Drive activist working closely with Manal Al Sharif, the group’s organizer who was imprisoned nine days after uploading a YouTube video of herself driving, reported that this outcome is exactly what the group feared.
The activist requested that her identity be kept a secret for her own protection.
At least two other women face trial for driving: Najla al-Hariri in Jeddah next month, and one unidentified woman currently undergoing trial in the Eastern Providence.
According to the source, Madihah Al-Agoosh was also arrested today for driving in front of her house. She was one of the women who drove in the 1991 protest.
This is the doing of what the source called an “underground” movement by Saudi religious authorities to unlawfully persecute any women drivers, even retroactively.
“We are all very scared that they’re going to arrest every one of us,” she said.
As Saudi king Abdullah decreed women had the right to vote, al-Hariri was contacted by the Authority of the Prosecutors Committee and told she will be tried next month.
Al-Hariri, a well-known Women2Drive supporter, had been briefly detained in August for driving.
But she was released even after refusing to sign a pledge never to drive again — historically, the release of a detained Saudi woman driver depends on such a promise. Activists like Zaki Safar celebrated the notable first as “an enormous positive turn.”
But this past weekend Al-Hariri was forced to surrender. She signed the pledge she had refused the month before and was informed of her impending prosecution. She has hired an attorney.
The Women2Drive movement is now being driven to a u-turn.
“It is completely unacceptable, shameful as it is dangerous to call in an honorably lady who is a wife, a mother, and first and foremost a citizen of this country,” read the statement from MyRight2Dignity.
The unidentified Saudi woman facing trial in the Eastern Providence also drove in the Women2Drive movement. Fearing she will draw attention, which will be held against her during trial, the woman has refused to hire a lawyer, according to the anonymous activist.
The Right2Dignity has announced its initiative to provide lawyers for any woman sent to trial for driving.
“What is happening to our women today is unfortunate and violates the rule of law and legal rights and is contrary to the reformist direction that was launched by The custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” read the Right2Dignity statement.
The anonymous activist emphasized that this persecution is the effort of “religious extremist” conservative Saudis and not the king himself.
“We need the whole world to know the truth …it’s so horrible that the [Saudi] religious men break the laws to prosecuted women who did not violate any law, we need the world to talk about this,” she said.
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