Saudi women activists get jail time for helping starving mother locked in home
Published time: June 19, 2013 01:56
AFP Photo / Fayez Nureldine
A Saudi court sentenced two women to ten months in prison, along with
a two-year travel ban, after they tried to help a Canadian woman who,
with her three children, was denied adequate food and water and was
subjected to violence by her Saudi husband.
On June 6 2011, the two human rights workers Wajeha al-Huwaider
and Fawzia al-Oyouni received a text message from Nathalie Morin,
the Canadian woman, saying that her husband had locked the whole
family in the house and left for a week-long visit to see
relatives in another town while her supplies of food and water
were running out, according to Human Rights Watch.
“I cannot help myself and I have no rights in Saudi Arabia. My
children are hungry and I cannot do anything to feed them. I'm
fighting to get freedom, justice and fairness for my family
including myself,” Morin wrote on her blog.
The two bought food and came to Morin’s house, where police were
already waiting for them. The women were brought to Damman
station for questioning, where police told al-Huwaider and
al-Oyouni they believed they were trying to smuggle Morin and her
three children to Canada, Human Rights Center reports.
After the women signed a statement pledging to cease all
involvement with the case, the police released them. However,
more than a year later in July 2012, authorities called in
al-Huwaider and al-Oyouni for questioning, after which the
government launched a case against them.
The trial continued for another year, and last Saturday presiding
judge Fahad al-Gda'a issued a ruling sentencing the two human
rights workers to ten months in prison, imposing an additional
two-year travel ban on top of the jail time. The charges were
“inciting a woman to flee with her children” and
“attempting to turn a woman against her husband.” The
women were acquitted of charges that they had attempted to
smuggle the wife and her three children to the Canadian Embassy
in Riyadh.
Al-Huwaider and al-Oyouni plan to challenge the ruling in the
Court of Appeals.
The same day the two women issued a statement that when the case
was launched, they predicted that the government was trying to
punish them for their women’s rights activism in recent
years.
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Saudi Arabia: Activists Convicted For Answering Call For Help, Says HRW
June 18, 2013
By
Eurasia Review
A
Saudi court convicted two Saudi women’s rights activists on June 15,
2013, for trying to help a woman flee the country. Wajeha al-Huwaider
and Fawzia al-Oyouni were each sentenced to 10 months in prison and
two-year travel bans.
Al-Huwaider, a member of the Human Rights
Watch Middle East advisory committee, told Human Rights Watch that she
believes authorities pursued this case to punish her for unrelated
women’s rights activism over the last 10 years. Al-Huwaider and
al-Oyouni said they intend to appeal their convictions.
“Saudi
authorities are using the courts to send a message that they won’t
tolerate any attempt to alleviate the dismal status of women’s rights in
the kingdom,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human
Rights Watch. “Saudi authorities should immediately drop this case and
stop harassing Saudi women who call for reform.”
Al-Huwaider told
Human Rights Watch that her and al-Oyouni’s involvement with the
Canadian woman began in 2009, when she received messages from Johanne
Durocher, the woman’s mother, who is in Canada, pleading for activists
to help her daughter, Natalie Morin. Morin is married to a Saudi
citizen, Sa’eed al-Shahrani, and lives with him and their three children
in the Eastern Province city of Dammam.
Durocher told them that
al-Shahrani, a former police officer, was abusing Morin by locking her
in their house and denying her adequate food and water. Durocher had
helped draw international media attention to the case in 2009 by
lobbying Canadian government officials to intervene and organizing
protests over the case in Canada.
Al-Huwaider said that she and
al-Oyouni organized several trips by other activists to deliver food and
supplies to the woman, but that they did not attempt to visit Morin
until the afternoon of June 6, 2011, when they received distressed
messages from Morin herself. The messages said that Morin’s husband had
left for a week-long visit to see relatives in another town and that her
supplies of food and water were running out. When al-Huwaider and
al-Oyouni approached the house to offer assistance they were confronted
by police who were apparently waiting for them to arrive. The officers
immediately arrested them and took them to a Damman police station for
questioning.
The police told al-Huwaider and al-Oyouni that they
believed they had gone to Morin’s home to help her and her three
children, all Canadian citizens, to escape to Canada.
Police
released al-Huwaider and al-Oyouni after midnight on June 7, after they
signed a statement pledging to cease all involvement with the case and
to allow the government-affiliated National Human Rights Commission and
Canadian Embassy to investigate. The Damman branch of the National
Commission on Human Rights declined to intervene, stating that there was
insufficient evidence to conclude that al-Shahrani was mistreating
Morin and their children. Canadian government officials have maintained
since 2009 that this case is a private matter that must be resolved by
Saudi authorities.
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© 2010 AFP/Getty Images
Leading Rights Group Shuttered, Harsh Sentences on Politically-Motivated Charges
The Saudi authorities should immediately release
al-Qatani and al-Hamid, drop the charges against them, and end political
trials before the Specialized Criminal Court.
Eric Goldstein, Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division
(Beirut) – The harsh sentences against leading
Saudi rights advocates and an order to shutter a civil and political
rights group are major setbacks for rights in
Saudi Arabia.
Saudi authorities should release and drop charges against the two
leading human rights activists sentenced to long prison terms after a
Specialized Criminal Court convicted them on politically-motivated
charges on Saturday.
The activists, Mohammed al-Qahtani and Abdulla al-Hamid, are
co-founders of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA),
a rights organization that has called for greater civil rights in the
kingdom. They faced charges including “destabilizing security by calling
for protests,” “spreading false information to outside sources,”
“undermining national unity,” and “setting up an illegal human rights
organization.” The two activists have been sentenced solely for their
peaceful advocacy of reform and criticism of human rights violations.
“This is simply an outrageous case, which shows the extremes Saudi
authorities are prepared to go to silence moderate advocates of reform
and greater respect for human rights”, said
Eric Goldstein,
Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division at Human
Rights Watch. “The Saudi authorities should immediately release
al-Qatani and al-Hamid, drop the charges against them, and end political
trials before the Specialized Criminal Court.”
The Specialized Criminal Court began trying the
two activists
in June 2012. At first, their trials were separate and they were
conducted behind closed doors, like most other trials before the
Specialized Criminal Court. The judge, however, decided to merge the two
cases after their first sessions. The trial continued on camera until
the fifth and last session, when the judge finally opened the
proceedings and allowed the presence of media, lawyers, and rights
activists, who attended in the presence of members of the security
forces.
At the final session on Saturday, according to
Sabq
newspaper, the judge read through the charges at length and likened the
activists’ beliefs to those of terrorists, claiming that “calling for a
change of the name of the kingdom cannot possibly be reformist.” The
newspaper also reported that presiding judge Hammad al-Omar told
al-Hamid, after he remarked on the lack of independence of the court,
not to question the validity of the sentences, warning him that “judges
may add what crimes they deem necessary to the charge
list.”
Read More Here
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Sahar Gul at a women's shelter in Kabul, Afghanistan, last year. She
was not told about the release of her three in-laws, her lawyer said.
Photograph: Kuni Takahashi/New York Times/Redux/eyevine
"Sahar Gul was not told about this," Motley said. "The prosecutor
didn't show up or wasn't informed. I believe the only person in court
was the defence lawyer for the accused."
