‘Control this and we won’t have a problem’ declared the Intelligence Officer, pointing to his mouth; such was the warning administered to Wajeha al-Huwaider when she was summoned to Intelligence Headquarters in Saudi Arabia last week. Her ‘crime’? To have attempted to plan an event calling for greater rights for women in Saudi Arabia. The fact that the event itself never materialised is considered irrelevant. In the Saudi Kingdom, to have considered holding it is crime enough. In true Orwellian style, the thought of the ‘crime’ is as punishable as any actual transgression.
And as a result, Wajeha al-Huwaider, the Saudi journalist and women’s rights’ activist, has been warned to keep quiet and had her passport taken away from her. When will she get it back? Weeks? Months? Years? No-one knows. What must she do to get it back? Again, she can only guess. The only certainty is that until it is returned is, she is a de facto prisoner in her own country; an inmate in the vast open prison that Saudi Arabia can be for those who would deign to criticise its government and society.
Wajeha’s freedom of movement was removed only days before she was due to fly to Europe and then the US to address a series of conferences. The purpose of these gatherings? Broadly speaking, to analyse prospects for reform and the advance of human rights in the Saudi Kingdom! Her recent personal experience would appear to offer the starkest evidence, as to the state of play in this regard.
Wajeha, though, is no stranger to the realities of life in Saudi Arabia. In particular, she is all-too-familiar with the invisible red lines that demarcate what one can and cannot say in the land of the House of Saud. In 2003, she was banned from writing for Saudi newspapers, because of her strident criticism of the way women are treated in the Kingdom. Despite this, she subsequently continued to write, if only for liberal Arabic websites, such as Elaph and Middle East Transparent. However, it would seem that even this reduced outlet has been deemed too much for the Saudi authorities; now they wish to silence her altogether.
In so doing, the authorities are responding to the fact that Wajeha has dramatically shown the courage of her convictions. Last month she staged an extraordinary solo demonstration, as she walked the Fahd Causeway that links Bahrain with Saudi Arabia, carrying a placard that read: ‘Give Women their Rights!’ Unsurprisingly, she managed to get only a few hundred yards before being arrested by Saudi security forces, whereupon she was detained for several hours. Thereafter, she was released, but only when a male relative had arrived to vouch for her. As Wajeha notes, this procedure merely confirms the discrimination, against which she has set herself: ‘Saudi law does not allow the woman to be responsible for her behaviour. Only when my brother arrived, who is younger than me by many years, did they agree to release me’.
The timing of her demonstration was such as to mark the one year anniversary of the accession of King Abdullah to the throne of Saudi Arabia. In that time, and in spite of Abdullah’s self-professed commitment to the cause of reform, the position of women has barely advanced in the Kingdom. More broadly, meanwhile, a recent Freedom House report included Saudi Arabia amongst its twenty ‘worst of the worst’ countries in the world, in terms of political and civil liberties. As the report reflects, in the Saudi Kingdom the forces of conservatism and fundamentalist religious groups remain in the ascendant; those, such as Wajeha, who call for change, are trampled on by the state.
That this should be so is a function of the fact that people like her display the characteristic that causes the most anxiety for the authorities: a lack of fear. As Wajeha admits, the reason why her planned event to protest the situation faced by women in the Kingdom was cancelled, was because she couldn’t get enough people to join her. The reason she couldn’t get enough people to join her? Fear.
Saudi Arabia remains what Natan Sharansky would label a ‘fear society’, par excellence. For this reason, the overwhelming majority of people dread to put their heads above the parapet; those prepared to speak out in favour of reform are few and far between.
And yet, those very few people who do stand up for reform are themselves greatly feared by the authorities; for their lack of fear, itself carries the vision of a freer future. By refusing to be afraid, they illuminate the path, which others may follow, in ever greater numbers, until they finally bring about an end to the ‘fear society’.
This, of course, stands as little comfort to those like Wajeha who are currently experiencing the sharp edge of the repressive state. Denied her passport she is now stranded within Saudi Arabia, unable to reach her home in Bahrain, from where she previously commuted on a daily basis to her job with Aramco. A single mother, she is unable to see her two sons (one of whom lives in the US and the other who lives with her in Bahrain) and, unsurprisingly, it is this that animates her most. And it is on this front now that she is most in need of support – whether diplomatic, media or fraternal – so that her passport is returned and freedom of movement restored.
The most pertinent and arresting conclusion is that which she offers herself: ‘I’m forced to be away from my son, my home, my room, my books and my peaceful world... and all, just because I have chosen to be me...’
For more information on the broader absence of human and political rights in Saudi Arabia, see Freedom House’s, Worst of the Worst: The World's Most Repressive Societies 2006