26 okt. 2013

Drive against the hatch-kingdom’s male-only driving rules

The hatch of driver´s license.
Source: @hmalsabah.
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are prohibited from driving. The medieval ban is not stated by law but is a religious fatwa by the country’s Wahhabi clerics and enforced by regime forces. If women get behind the wheel in the kingdom, they may be arrested, sent to court and the punisher can even flogged them.
Now women in Saudi Arabia have canceled that a driving campaign Women2Drive planned for Saturday to protest a medieval ban on driving by women in the Arab country,  instead there are announcing for open campaign.
Several women said they had received threatening telephone calls from the Interior Ministry asking them not to drive on Saturday.
The cyber-dissident law will be applied against violators while other measures will be taken against those who gather to support the planned protest, the ministry said on Friday.
The Saudi women, who had originally planned a drive-in on Saturday, canceled it after Saudi authorities threatened many of them with legal action but announced an `open driving campaign´.

On October 24, Amnesty International urged Saudi Arabia to respect the right of women to drive.
It is astonishing that in the 21st century the Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny women the right to legally drive a car,
said Philip Luther, the Amnesty’s director for the Middle East and North Africa Program.
According to BBC also Human Rights Watch has also thrown its weight behind the Saudi women’s campaign to take to the wheel in defiance of the ban.
It’s past time to address the country’s systemic discrimination; driving could open roads to reform,
said Rothna Begum, Middle East and North Africa women’s rights researcher at HRW.
In 2011, dozens of women took part in a similar campaign, dubbed Women2Drive, challenging the ban. They posted on internet social networks pictures and videos of themselves while driving.

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