Saudi officials confirmed in a statement to the United Nations high commissioner for human rights that Manahel al-Otaibi was sentenced on 9 January for what the Saudi government called “terrorist offences”.
Al-Otaibi, who was sentenced in a secret hearing before the counter-terrorism court, was found guilty of charges related to a Saudi anti-terror law that criminalises the use of websites to “broadcasts or publishes news, statements, false or malicious rumors, or the like for committing a terrorist crime”.
Among other charges, Otaibi was accused by Saudi authorities of using a hashtag – translated to #societyisready – to call for an end to male guardianship rules. Her sister, Fouz al-Otaibi was also accused of not wearing decent clothing but was able to flee Saudi Arabia before her arrest.
Another sister, Maryam, is a known women’s rights advocate who was detained, held, and eventually released in 2017 for protesting guardianship rules.
Rights groups say al-Otaibi has been subjected to severe abuse, beginning with her forcible disappearance for five months from November 2023 to April 2024. Once she was back in contact with her family, she said she was held in solitary confinement and had broken a leg after being subjected to physical abuse. Saudi officials denied the claims.
Her case follows a slew of similar cases in which Saudi women, in particular, have been subjected to draconian sentences for using social media accounts to express themselves. They include women such as Salma al-Shehab, sentenced to 27 years, Fatima al-Shawarbi, sentenced to 30 years, Sukaynah al-Aithan, sentenced to 40 years, and Nourah al-Qahtani, sentenced to 45 years.
And then they’re spending billions to try sportwashing their bloody image. Isn’t much cheaper to just be decent in human rights? Then people would like you even without your billions
Let’s see: a bunch of people who get multi-million “stipends” a year whose goal in life is either to live the big life, plus 2/3rds of the citizens getting hired by the government onto “management” positions with an average workweek of (ONE) 1 hour… and you want them to do, what? stop acting like uber-spoiled brats?
Change would require like, actual work, or something. They’re easily two generations into being spoiled, the reality check will be so hard it’s hard to imagine.
Its a Saudi Man right now in the UN Comission for Womens rights.
WTF??
It is absurd that Saudia Arabia will be hosting the UN Comission for Womens rights. ‘They’ve destroyed us because of some tweets’: why has Saudi Arabia targeted these three sisters? Saudia Arabia is as shit as Iran’s regime.
Religion and patriarchal control and oppression of women pretty much anywhere in the world is like white on rice.
Obscene oil wealth that swallows up any attempts to focus on the regimes across the board human rights abuses. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which oversees about $650 billion in assets invests in US and global markets, in twitter, banks, in global sports, in US weapons, in surveillance, in wars… Saudi golf takeover is blueprint for what they want to do everywhere else
Yeah, his name is Abdulaziz Alwasil.
Human Rights Watch says about women’s rights in Saudi Arabia:
The Personal Status Law [in Saudi Arabia] requires women to obtain a male guardian’s permission to marry, codifying the country’s longstanding practice. Married women are required to obey their husbands in a “reasonable manner.” The law further states that neither spouse may abstain from sexual relations or cohabitation without the other spouse’s consent, implying a marital right to intercourse.
While a husband can unilaterally divorce his wife, a woman can only petition a court to dissolve their marriage contract on limited grounds and must “establish [the] harm” that makes the continuation of marriage “impossible” within those grounds. The law does not specify what constitutes “harm” or what evidence can be submitted to support a case, leaving judges wide discretion in the law’s interpretation and enforcement to maintain the status quo.
Fathers remain the default guardians of their children, limiting a mother’s ability to participate fully in decisions related to her child’s social and financial well-being. A mother may not act as her child’s guardian unless a court appoints her, and she will otherwise have limited authority to make decisions for her child’s well-being, even in cases where the parents do not live together and judicial authorities decide that the child should live with the mother.
There are so many problems with Saudi Arabia, but because they have money and oil, nobody dares do anything. If we could decouple ourselves from their damn oil, maybe we could have more influence on them.
If you want equal rights for women in Saudi Arabia, try your best to stop depending on their major export: oil.
Not all plastic is oil, there was plenty of non-oil based plastics before WW2:
https://plasticseurope.org/plastics-explained/history-of-plastics/
Even after WW2, there have been advances in non-oil plastics. They haven’t disappeared, they’re all still here… just overwhelmed by the mountain of “get rich quick” scams that are throwaway plastics.
And plastic was not even intended to be throwaway! Over the years it got engineered to sell as many units for as high a profit as possible… and what better way than selling single-use easy-to-break plastic products.
Still, if all oil production stopped right now, we wouldn’t run out of ways to make plastics, just out of ways to produce cheap plastic waste.
But they’re our ally, so nothing bad happened. Please remove this from your memory for the sake of a peaceful Middle East. Thanks! -USA
Why weren’t her male guardians arrested for not properly controlling her? I mean, honestly, the law she was protesting says she can’t be responsible for herself then she shouldn’t be punished for her actions.
Selective enforcement probably, especially towards a known women’s right advocate.
They were pretty brave to go through with these sort of protests, but at the same time, Saudi Arabia is just not the country to do this sort of thing. It is a harsh religious dictatorship that only respects the richest of its citizens. The best thing to do is to leave, and encourage others to do so. I know that’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s certainly better than to spend the rest of your life being beaten in a prison cell.
This reminds me of the futility of White Rose.
