Women in the West who complain about the difficulty of having to juggle work and family and what a hard life equality entails, should take some time to reflect on women who, superficially, live the life of Riley in Riyadh.
“Would you prefer to drive a car yourself, or to be driven? I have my own driver, and if I get divorced, my brothers have to feed me, house me, and drive me! Am I living a life of luxury? Yes I am. It’s high living,” a Saudi Arabian woman was quoted as saying recently.
But of course there is always a repressive downside to being a kept woman. Women in Saudi Arabia, one of the last absolute monarchies in the world, do not drive because they can all afford a chauffeur, but because the law forbids them. And that is a relatively minor restriction on their freedom of movement. They cannot travel or even have surgery without their husband’s or father’s permission.
Most of us know that Saudi Arabia provides most of the world’s oil and we often see members of its Royal Family on television, more recently at the OPEC summit, in which they play a leading role.
Yet, once in a while we are shocked to hear how their justice system deals with people, and they are not all criminals.
We hear of floggings and amputations, but as often happens we forget about brutality being carried out elsewhere and get on with our lives. And of course because world leaders are cautious about upsetting the oil cart, news reflecting badly on the Saudis is quickly glazed over.
Until another shocking story hits the news. The latest involves a 19-year-old married woman, who was gang raped by a group of seven men more than a year ago.
Rather than sympathy and support for the trauma she endured the court sentenced her to 90 lashes.
She was abducted together with a man she was not related to and then raped, her lawyer, Abdulrahman al-Lahim, told the media.
A human rights attorney, al-Lahim’s license was revoked last week for speaking to the Saudi media about the case. Which means that the young woman now has no legal representation.
“Barring the lawyer from representing the victim in court is almost equivalent to the rape crime itself,” founding member of the newly formed Saudi Association for the Defence of Women’s Rights, Fawzeyah al-Oyouni said in a CNN report.
The raped woman’s sentence has now been increased to 200 lashes and six months in prison, because of the media exposure.
The woman was sentenced to the first lashings because one of the indictments is that according to the Shari'a (Islamic law, a system of devising laws, based on the Qur'an. It is not written and, therefore, subject to a wide array of interpretations) it is illegal for a woman to meet with a male she is not related to.
So it seems that that offence, rather than being overridden by the more serious offence of gang rape, has resulted in the victim being doubly violated. And her punishment has now been augmented because her case has become public knowledge.
Citing phone records from the police investigation, Al-Lahim told CNN that the man she met was blackmailing her. She was meant to retrieve an old photo of her, which the lawyer maintains was harmless and did not show his client in any compromising position.
They were kidnapped and the woman was gang raped.
Blackmail must be one of the underlying risks women in Saudi Arabia must be constantly faced with, considering the restrictive regime they have to live by. They are not allowed to mix with the opposite sex except for family members. If they walk unaccompanied, or are in the company of a man who is neither their husband nor a close relative, they are at risk of arrest on suspicion of prostitution or other ‘moral’ offences.
The offence of khilwa (being alone with a male who is not an immediate relative) is punishable for both men and women, but it appears to be more frequently enforced on women.
In public, they eat, work, and pray in separate areas designated for women. There is even segregation in their homes with separate entrances and living rooms for the men.
Then of course there are the clothing restrictions. The Mutawwa, (religious police) pressure women to wear a full-length black covering known as an Abaya, and to cover their heads.
Women are also not allowed to testify in court unless it is about a private matter that was not observed by a man.
Despite the Saudi government’s announcement last year that elections for new municipal councils will be held (the first stage of voting began a few weeks ago) women will still not be allowed to vote, political parties are banned and the men can only vote for half the seats, so it is hardly a democratic reform.
However, the Saudi government has taken some steps toward bettering the situation of women, recently. Earlier this year special courts to handle domestic abuse cases were established and a new labour law that addresses working women’s rights and creation of a human rights commission has been adopted.
But reform is painfully slow. Amnesty International points out that the UN Commission on Human Rights, which has criticised the human rights record of a wide range of countries in all regions of the world, has yet to publicly address the serious human rights situation in Saudi Arabia.
And all that the US State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, could say about the latest case and the punishment was “surprising” and “astonishing,” as though the State department is blissfully unaware of what goes on in Saudi!

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