Saudi woman driver to be lashed
Court in Saudi Arabia sentences woman to 10 lashes for
defying the country's ban on female drivers.
Amnesty International says a court in Saudi Arabia has
sentenced a woman to 10 lashes for challenging a ban on women driving in the
conservative kingdom.
He also promised to include them in the next all-appointed
consultative Shura Council in 2013.
"Flogging is a cruel punishment in all circumstances
but it beggars belief that the authorities in Saudi Arabia have imposed lashes
on a woman apparently for merely driving a car", Philip Luther, an Amnesty
regional deputy director, said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.
"Allowing women to vote in council elections is all
well and good, but if they are still going to face being flogged for trying to
exercise their right to freedom of movement then the king's much trumpeted
'reforms' actually amount to very little."
Two other women are also believed to be facing charges
related to driving, the UK-based rights group statement said.
Driving 'a necessity'
Najla Hariri, one of the women facing charges, told the
Reuters news agency: "They called me in for questioning on a charge of
challenging the monarch on Sunday ... I signed a pledge not to drive again,
although my driving was a result of necessity not an act of defiance."
Under Saudi Arabia's laws, women require a male guardian's
permission to work, travel abroad or even undergo certain types of surgery.
There is no written law banning women from driving but there
is a law requiring citizens to use locally issued licences while in the
country.
Such licences are not issued to women, making it effectively
illegal for them to drive.
In May, as pro-democracy protests swept across the region,
some women in Saudi Arabia called for the right to drive.
A campaign dubbed Women2Drive issued calls on social media
such as Twitter and Facebook to challenge the ban.Some women posted on twitter
that they drove successfully in the streets of Jeddah, Riyadh and Khobar while
others said they were stopped by police who later let them go after signing a
pledge not to drive again.
On May 22, Manal Alsharif, who posted a YouTube video of her
driving in the streets of Khobar, was arrested.
She was later released but her case proved a deterrent for
many women.
"I am very upset and disturbed ... I believe that this
is a message which intends to tell women that they will not get all their
demands," Naila Attar, an activist and one of the women who organised the
campaign Baladi [My Country] said.
"We are now working on a petition to the king ...
asking him to stop the lashing order," she said.
Source: aljazeera.net
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