Geneva: The UN human rights office, OHCHR, expressed outrage on Friday over a 34-year prison sentence handed down to a Saudi woman charged with aiding dissidents.

Al-Shehab, 34, was arrested in Saudi Arabia in 2021 while on a holiday from the United Kingdom where she is a student.

She was accused of spreading false information and aiding dissidents seeking to disrupt public order with her tweets, retweets and follows on Twitter.

The UN human rights office, OHCHR, expressed outrage on Friday over a prison sentence spanning more than three decades handed down to a Saudi woman charged with following and retweeting so-called dissidents and activists.

OHCHR spokesperson Liz Throssel, in a statement, said doctoral student Salma Al-Shehab was sentenced to 34 years in jail, followed by a 34-year travel ban in connection with a series of tweets and retweets on political and human rights issues in Saudi Arabia.

“We urge the Saudi authorities to quash her conviction and release her immediately and unconditionally,” she said. “She should never have been arrested and charged in the first place for such conduct”.

The extraordinarily lengthy sentence adds to “the chilling effect” among Government critics and civil society at large, the statement continued, describing it as “yet another example of Saudi authorities weaponising the country’s counter-terrorism and anti-cybercrime laws to target, intimidate and retaliate against human rights defenders and those who voice dissent”.

According to UN News, media reports have pointed out that the case marks the latest example of how the country has targeted Twitter users in a campaign of repression, while simultaneously controlling a major indirect stake in the United States social media company.

Journalists have also observed that the sentencing by Saudi’s special terrorist court was handed down weeks after US President Joe Biden visited Saudi Arabia, which human rights activists had warned could embolden the kingdom to escalate its crackdown on dissidents and other pro-democracy activists, the report added.

“Saudi Arabia must not only release Al-Shehab so that she can re-join her family, but also review all convictions stemming from free expression against human rights defenders, including women who were jailed after they legitimately demanded reforms of discriminatory policies, as well as religious leaders and journalists,” said Throssell.

OHCHR also urged the Saudi Government to establish “a robust legislative framework in line with international human rights law” to uphold the rights to freedom of expression and association, and the right of peaceful assembly for all.

Courtesy: The Daily Siasat

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Bangkok: An 18-year-old Saudi girl escaped from her family during a holiday in Kuwait and boarded a plane for Thailand from where she hoped to fly to Australia and seek asylum. With a fire to assert her independence, she barricaded herself in her hotel room on Monday to avoid her imminent deportation from Bangkok airport.  
 
Her story has caught the global media attention due to her various social media posts on Twitter.
 
Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, 18, said that her family was abusive and she will be killed if she returns to her family.
 
After slipping away from her family, she got off the plane in Bangkok and said that a man was waiting, her name written on a placard. He said he would help her get a Thai visa, and disappeared with her passport.
 
Instead, Alqunun said, the man came back with other men she believes were Thai security officers and a representative of Kuwait Airlines. They said that her family had filed a missing person report about her and that she had to return to Kuwait on a flight late Monday morning.
 
“They will kill me,” she said by telephone Sunday evening from a hotel at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, where she was being kept overnight.
 
Human rights advocates urged the Thai government to allow Alqunun to continue on her journey to Australia or to seek asylum in Thailand. They called on the United Nations Refugee Agency to help her.
 
“Saudi women fleeing their families can face severe violence from relatives, deprivation of liberty, and other serious harm if returned against their will,” said Michael Page, the deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Thai authorities should immediately halt any deportation.”
 
Thailand has a history of sending refugees back to autocratic countries, including China, Pakistan and Turkey, said the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, Phil Robertson.
 
In November, the Thai authorities arrested a former Bahrain soccer player, Hakeem al-Araibi, who had been granted refugee status in Australia after speaking out against a powerful Bahraini soccer official.
 
Araibi had come to Thailand for his honeymoon but was stopped at the same Bangkok airport as Alqunun after Bahrain sought his arrest through Interpol. He remains in custody, awaiting a decision on Bahrain’s extradition request.
 
“Basically, Thailand is open for business sending refugees and asylum seekers back to their authoritarian governments,” Robertson said.
 
In the interview, Alqunun described a life of unrelenting abuse at the hands of her family, who live in the city of Hail, in northern Saudi Arabia. She said she was once locked in a room for six months because she had cut her hair in a way that her family did not approve of. And she said her family used to beat her, mostly her brother.
 
Saudi Arabia, Ms. Alqunun said, is “like a prison.”
 
“I can’t make my own decisions,” she said. “Even about my own hair, I can’t make decisions.”
 
Alqunun said that when she was 16, she tried to kill herself. When her family did not seek help for her, she said, she started planning her escape.
 
Even at age 18, though, Alqunun could not simply leave Saudi Arabia on her own. Women in the kingdom need the approval of a “male guardian” to travel, usually a father, husband or even a son.
 
Her chance for freedom came on Wednesday when her family took a trip to Kuwait, which does not have the same restrictions on women. On Saturday, she caught the plane to Thailand, where she had reserved a hotel and an outbound flight.
 
Her plan was to stay there until she could leave for Australia, where she was supposed to meet a woman she described as “a Saudi refugee” who would help her.
 
Maj. Gen. Surachate Hakparn, the head of Thailand’s immigration agency, said Alqunun had been denied a visa to enter Thailand because she did not have sufficient money. She also lacked the necessary documents to gain entry to the country or continue on to Australia, he said.
 
In a similar case in 2017, a 24-year-old Saudi woman Dina Ali Lasloom was forced to return to her family in Saudi Arabia while in transit in the Philippines on her way to Australia and has not been publicly heard from since. An airline security official told activists that Lasloom was heard “screaming and begging for help” as men carried her “with duct tape on her mouth, feet and hands” at the airport.
 
Alqunun said it appeared that the Saudis and Thai officials were working together. At one point, she said, she was required to sign documents written in Thai that she did not understand. She said her passport had been returned to her but was later taken again and handed over to Kuwait Airways to help ensure that she boarded her return flight.
 
If she is returned to Saudi Arabia, Alqunun could face criminal charges of parental disobedience or harming the reputation of the kingdom, Human Rights Watch said.
 
Saudi Arabian men consider themselves guardians of their families’ honour and often punish family members, especially girls and women, who are said to have brought dishonour on the family. In extreme cases, the family members are killed.
 
Alqunun said she was particularly concerned about what her family might do to her because in describing her plight on Twitter, she renounced religion.
 
“They will kill me because I fled and because I announced my atheism,” she said. “They wanted me to pray and to wear a veil, and I didn’t want to.”

 
Alqunun posted reports and videos on Twitter in a bid to build support.
 
“I’m the girl who run away from Kuwait to Thailand,” she wrote in one post. “I’m in real danger because the Saudi embassy trying to forcing me to go back to Saudi Arabia, while I’m at the airport waiting for my second flight.”
 
On Sunday, she was still hoping to make it to Australia.
 
“I want to be protected in a country that will give me my rights,” she said, “and allow me to live a normal life.”

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Amnesty International’s latest report, however, reveals that even a privileged background can no longer protect women’s rights activists from the brutality of the country’s current leadership.
This move towards indiscriminate oppression is a natural expansion of the kingdom’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) one-dimensional approach to all forms of dissent and opposition.

Read full report: aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/torture-reform-women-rights-saudi-arabia-181129172925565.html

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Earlier this summer, Saudi Arabia lifted the decades-long ban on women’s driving. The move is part of a series of reforms that the country has been implementing. In April the kingdom loosened male guardianship laws – under which women need the permission of a male guardian to work, travel or marry. And in 2015, women were granted the right to vote and run for elections. The reforms serve to revamp the image of Saudi Arabia in the international arena.
 

A woman in Saudi Arabia drives to work for the first time in Riyadh. AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty

More recently, however, in a diplomatic spat, Canada has criticized Saudi Arabia for human rights violations. Saudi officials have responded by cutting all economic and diplomatic ties, withdrawing investments and stopping flights. One of the main issues for the Canadians is the arrest by Saudi authorities of two prominent women’s rights activists. Tweets by Canadian diplomats called on the kingdom to release the activists. Saudi Arabia arrested several women’s rights activists in weeks prior and following the lifting the ban on women’s driving.

As a scholar of gender politics in Middle Eastern societies, I argue that all this goes to show that the kingdom is extending limited reforms to women to represent itself as modern but is adamant on not opening space for more voices.

Women, nationalism and modernization

Historically, the status of women has often served as a measure of social progress.

Take for example, the regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who served as president of Egypt from 1956, until his death in 1970. Nasser promoted the participation of women in the public sector as a symbol of the success of the regime in modernizing Egypt.

Women cheer for Gamal Abdel Nasser after he proclaimed a new Egyptian constitution that promised new rights for women in 1956. AP Photo

Under Nasser, the state adopted a series of laws to encourage women’s participation in the workforce. Between 1961 and 1969, the participation of women in the labor force increased by 31.1 percent.

Paid maternity leave was granted to working mothers during the day and child care was made available. Children and child rearing was no longer the sole responsibility of women, but increasingly that of the state and its institutions as well. There was no discussion, however, of men’s responsibility or how to balance work and family.

Scholars, thus, argue that these reforms were not genuine efforts by the regime to alter gender inequalities. Rather, they were important symbols in representing the Egyptian society as modern, socialist and progressive, where men and women were seen to work next to each other.

Also, the reforms did not include meaningful political rights. For example, while women were granted the right to vote in 1956, unlike men, they had to petition the state to include them on the list of registered voters. The regime also moved to suppress independent feminists such as Doria Shafiq, who campaigned for women’s suffrage for years.
 

Using women for politics

It was the same in many Middle Eastern and North African societies. The image of the woman was often constructed based on a political need at a given time and later deconstructed as well.

In Tunisia, for example, Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s nationalist leader and president, and after him President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali presented the image of the unveiled Tunisian women as a symbol of modernization, secularism and democracy.

Following Tunisian independence in 1956, Bourguiba rejected the veil and viewed it as a barrier to his modernizing project. In his Dec. 5, 1957, speech, he described the veil as an “odious rag” and an obstacle to the country’s path to modernization secluding women from participation in public space.

Bourguiba’s earlier views on the veil were, however, different. At the height of the nationalist struggle, during the 1930s to the 1950s against French colonial rule in Tunisia, Bourguiba emphasized the significance of the traditional Tunisian veil, the sefsari, as a symbol of national identity. The nationalist leader encouraged women to wear the sefsari as a way to oppose the colonial view. The colonial powers pushed for unveiling women and viewed it as part of the modernizing process.
 

Crackdown on feminists

Coming back to Saudi Arabia, the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has introduced Vision 2030 an ambitious social and economic reform plan, that he first announced in 2016. His goal is to liberalize the Saudi petro-state and open its centralized oil market to foreign investment. His promise is to bring larger parts of the Saudi population – especially women and youth – into the labor force.

At this juncture, reforms in women’s rights demonstrate that the kingdom is en route to modernizing. However, some of the actions of Saudi authorities – such as the arrest of prominent activists that Canada has expressed concerns over – are seemingly at odds with the image the reforms want to project.

Saudi women’s rights activist Souad al-Shammary, who has been jailed several times. AP Photo

The arrests started less than a month before the kingdom was due to lift the ban on women’s driving, when the authorities arrested some of the feminists who had campaigned for women’s rights to drive. Several pro-government social media groups were alleged to have launched a smear campaign tarnishing the activists’ reputation and branding them as “traitors” and “agents of foreign embassies.

The list of detained activists included high-profile feminists such as Loujain al-Hathloul – a vocal Saudi activist who since 2014 has been arrested numerous times for defying the ban on women driving.

Following the decision to lift the ban on driving, the authorities approached the women who had been arrested, in addition to others who previously participated in protests against the driving ban and demanded that they completely refrain from commenting on the decision.

Media coverage has made no mention of the role of activists who had long campaigned for women’s right to drive. Rather, it praised the crown prince for lifting the ban.

In my view, there are many contradictions that surround these recent reforms. By silencing activists, the crown prince appears to tie the decision to allow Saudi women to drive to burnishing his own legacy. More importantly, by imprisoning high-profile feminists, the monarchy attempts to weaken, if not abolish, the ability of women’s groups to organize, advance their rights and be heard.
 

Nermin Allam, Assistant Professor of Politics, Rutgers University Newark

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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A Saudi woman poses with her new driving license after the country’s ban on women driving was lifted in June, 2018. Photo: Gehad Hamdy/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved.

Saudi Arabia’s ongoing crackdown on women’s rights activists undermines Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s own reform agenda. It reveals a disconnect between this young leader who styles himself as a reformist and a women’s rights advocate and the new reality in the Muslim world today.

Increasingly, Muslim women are reclaiming an Islam that has long espoused equality, justice and freedom for all. These women are leading change from within their communities. Through their collective actions, they have overcome long-standing barriers by reforming laws, introducing new narratives on religious thought and histories, and creating new spaces (online and offline) for movement building across the Muslim world.

In the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, women ulama are working with women’s rights activists to assert themselves. They’ve issued authoritative fatwas against domestic violence, child marriage and environmental destruction. As they change the landscape of social and religious discourse, Muslim women everywhere are seeing not only that change is possible – but that it is coming from their own work on the ground.

“Muslim women are reclaiming an Islam that has long espoused equality, justice and freedom for all.”

In India, women qadis have set up independent dispute resolution centres to resolve marital disputes, provide counselling and even conduct marriages. They offer an alternative to the traditional, informal qadi system that is often biased against women. Building on the Qur’an, Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), the national constitution and women’s rights, their approach is spreading across continents through a borderless, informal network of Muslim women activists.

This same approach, for example, was adopted by women’s rights activists in The Gambia in their ‘Drop the Knife’ campaign against female genital mutilation, which eventually led to the harmful practice being outlawed.  

Closer to Saudi Arabia, in Morocco, a national alliance of women’s rights activists, academics and theologians successfully pushed the government to end legal discrimination against women in the family by reforming the country’s family status code, in 2004. Now, it’s arguably the most progressive family law in the Muslim world; marriage is defined in this law as a partnership of equals, with this equality justified in the name of Islam.

Morocco’s reform emboldened women’s rights activists in diverse Muslim contexts to escalate advocacy for equality and justice. Yes, opposition to these movements for change is rampant and fierce. But this has only strengthened their resolve to march forward.
“Yes, opposition to these movements is rampant and fierce. But this has only strengthened their resolve.”

In Malaysia, Muslim women’s rights activists have for decades challenged the state’s use of Islam to justify discrimination against women. In 2009, amid rising conservatism and extremism, we and other women launched a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family, called Musawah (meaning ‘equality’ in Arabic).

This movement’s arguments for reform are grounded in Islamic principles, human rights standards, constitutional guarantees of equality and women’s lived realities. It is bringing together Muslim women from diverse national contexts and creating new connections beyond borders.
These movements are unstoppable. Muslim women’s rights activists have created new international networks of solidarity and collaboration over language barriers and across continents. Struggles are being waged across all aspects of life. There is energy for genuine dialogue and partnerships with all who seek reform – as long as women’s autonomy is respected.

Victories, however small, build confidence, while losses or setbacks enhance rigour. As the Indonesian grassroots women ulama declared earlier in 2018, women’s leadership in the Muslim world is a historical inevitability. 

More and more women are claiming their rights grounded in the belief in an Islam that upholds equality and justice for all. They actively engage in the rich Muslim legal tradition with sophisticated tools and concepts that open the possibility of reform. They are shaping and influencing how Islam is understood and used in ways that make sense to today’s realities.

“Women’s leadership in the Muslim world is a historical inevitability.”

Over the past three months, the Saudi government has arrested at least 14 (and continues to detain at least six) women’s rights activists – including long-term advocates for ending the ban on women driving and the country’s male guardianship system, which requires women to get permission from male relatives for activities including travelling abroad or getting a job.

These Saudi women who were arrested are part of the growing international community of Muslim women advocating for equality and justice. Their gains are the collective gain of this broader community of activists, and likewise are their losses. Their silencing is felt as an attack on us collectively.

Individual women may be silenced, but rest assured that our collective voice continues to speak truth to power.

The arrests of our Saudi sisters have come despite promises of reform from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He would do better to engage in an open dialogue and exchange of ideas with them. These women understand change and what it takes to transform attitudes, behaviours, relations, institutions and worldviews. They could be his allies for genuine reform. 

Pathways for social, economic and political reform are diverse and contextual. But, as activists ourselves, we know that genuine reform cannot be achieved nor sustained without women’s full and meaningful participation as equals. Until our Saudi sisters are sitting at the table as equals, Saudi Arabia is on the wrong side of history.

Zainah Anwar is a co-founder and the executive director of Musawah, a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family, as well as a co-founder of Sisters in Islam. Find Musawah on Twitter @Musawah. 

Courtesy: https://www.opendemocracy.net

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Picture of the author taken in 2015 by Lujain Mirza as part of her research project about visual representation of Saudi Women at Brighton University. All rights reserved.

On September 26th 2017, the Saudi Arabian government announced the suspension of its infamous and much-criticised ban on female drivers. Unsurprisingly, the news was welcomed by some and rejected by others, although it is hard to get an accurate sense of the reception since the government routinely curbs freedom of expression. Nevertheless, a small minority will undoubtedly be jubilant: since 2011, a movement campaigning for the Saudi women’s right to drive has haunted the peripheries of national discourse, occasionally entering mainstream discussion and attracting national attention. It is interesting, in hindsight, to ask if this collective action influenced the decision and if, since much of this campaigning took place via Twitter, this validates optimistic arguments claiming that online spaces can be origins of real, material change? 

Since their emergence, the information and communication technologies (ICTs) of the web 2.0 era have radically altered debates around online protest. In the early days of web 2.0, many viewed the Internet’s poly-centric, interactive and trans-nationalist nature as indicative of a new era of democracy, interdependence and interconnection, while others glimpsed darker futures of fragmentation and terror. Today, expectations have been moderated accordingly, with Babak Rahimi  conceptualising the internet as a shifting mythic realm of constant discursive conflict. That being said, many still view the Internet as a radical ‘space’ beyond traditional power relations where individuals can engage in radical reinterpretations of their narratives of self. Could Saudi Arabia’s recent decision strengthen the case of these optimistic arguments? Can online activism really bring about change?

One can tweet anonymously, although still not entirely without risk
We should first note Twitter’s popularity in Saudi Arabia: in 2015 the country led the Arab world in Twitter usage with 2.4 million users. Statista lists a much higher figure for 2016 with 4.9 million active users. Increasingly, Twitter has become the arena in which women (and men) express resistance and opposition towards officially sanctioned discrimination. To some, such political engagement may be surprising; Saudi Arabia’s social, political and legal practices are notoriously discriminatory and exclusionary towards women. Such treatment can, however, fuel the anger which in turn motivates resistance. Various Twitter hashtags (e.g., #StopEnslavingSaudiWomen) became very popular, one following on from the other, giving Saudi women the ability to challenge (almost always anonymously) the existing patriarchal social system. The benefits of using Twitter for such purposes are evident: one can tweet anonymously, although still not entirely without risk, from an environment “characterized by relations of a minimal hierarchy and organizational heterogeneity”. 

Still, any political protest is risky in Saudi Arabia, and political discourse by Saudi women is particularly unacceptable, often entailing fierce punishments. Such extreme conditions ultimately lead to a unique ‘protest ecology’ with little resemblance to what many traditionally think of as ‘activism’. For example, external threats mean these anonymous female activists will likely never meet, and therefore their online protests seemingly stand little chance of becoming offline actions. Within such anonymous, scattered resistance, can opportunities for real psychological resistance still occur?

The questions I want to raise concern how we think of resistance: are we unethical if we downplay online resistance, knowing it may play even a small role in policy change? There are other issues, too: Alexander Haslam and Stephen Reicher’s suggest a social identity model of resistance dynamics arguing that a fixation with the processes of oppression can lead to a conception of “domination, tyranny, and abuse as natural or inevitable”. They characterise the oppressed as inevitable victims, leading to a reduced belief in the possible agency of the disadvantaged. Instead, we must be creative in seeking out resistances where we can.

In order to ease the identification of resistance, Haslam and Reicher propose a three-stage model that emphasises the importance of collective identity to the processes of resistance, and highlights oppression itself can often lead to the creation of shared identities that can help the disadvantaged endure their oppression. The act of identity creation itself thus needs to be re-characterised as an extremely active act – the first stage in a process of psychological resistance. Once this shared identity is established, a group can more effectively stabilise or destabilise intergroup inequality through the creation of cognitive alternatives (or shared visions of alternative ways of being), which are reinforced through sharing.

Of course, if there is one thing we can unequivocally say about Twitter, it is this: it allows one to see others like oneself, and thus to form an in-group (however loosely), which in turn leads to the creation of cognitive alternatives. Once a group identity and cognitive alternative is formed, support can be sought from third parties: thus such cognitive fantasies can spread, new ideas of being travel through a global communications networks.

In an environment like Saudi Arabia, protest will begin online, hidden and anonymous

Like other observers, I argue that even in such contexts as Saudi Arabia, might still take online resistance less seriously due to a persistent and widespread misinterpretation of ‘resistance’ as largely referring to offline, physical actions, which are seen as more consequential. In contrast, recent social movements scholars advocate treating alternative forms of collective mobilisation as legitimate objects of study. Indeed, it has been argued that internal psychological resistance should be more highly valued, as it offers a middle ground for the oppressed, helping them to define their world view amidst oppression without the need for action – or without, we might say, the freedom for action.

On a final hopeful note, in an environment like Saudi Arabia, protest will begin online, hidden and anonymous. I hope that the Saudi decision will show that such activism can be consequential too. Moreover, this shows that we need to champion these beginnings, these early stages of internal resistances. Glimpsing these beginnings, we must not be disheartened by their clandestine, anonymous, restricted and underground nature. The decision to allow Saudi women to drive shows that through the creation of group identities and cognitive alternatives such hidden online spaces may produce new physical realities.

Heyla Selim holds a doctorate degree from the School of psychology at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. Her PhD thesis titled: “Why the caged bird sings: an investigation of cultural influence on online behaviour in Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom”. She is an assistant professor at the Psychology Department at King Saud University in Ryadh since July 2008.

Courtesy: Open Democracy
 
 

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Photo credit: BBC

Saudi women will at last be able to drive from June 24 next year. A decree to this effect has been issued by Saudi Arabia’s King Salman.
Today this Gulf Kingdom is the only country in the world where women are prohibited from driving a vehicle. Women who defied the ban were arrested and fined.

The royal decree has been greeted with applause from across the globe. American President Donald Trump has welcomed the move as “a positive step” towards the promotion of women’s rights.

Sahar Nassif, a Saudi woman who has for long campaigned for the right to drive told BBC she was “very, very excited, jumping up and down and laughing”. “I’m going to buy my dream car, a convertible Mustang, and it’s going to be black and yellow!” she added.

The country’s US ambassador, Prince Khaled bin Salman, confirmed that women would not have to get male permission to take driving lessons, and would be able to drive anywhere they liked.

He said it was “an historic and big day” and “the right decision at the right time”.

Rights groups in Saudi Arabia have been campaigning for years demanding an end to the ban on women driving.
Manal al-Sharif, an organiser of the Women2Drive campaign who has also been imprisoned for driving, said on Twitter that Saudi Arabia would “never be the same again”.

The hashtags “I am my own guardian” and “Saudi Women Can Drive” quickly gained traction on social media.
 

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Saudi Arabia is known for its extremely conservative outlook and laws towards women and women’s dress, but it seems there might soon be some respite.

Going by recent reports, the country’s new heir to the throne Prince Mohammed bin Salman has announced plans of opening a new luxury Red Sea resort on a stretch of Saudi Arabia’s northwest coastline, where women will be allowed to wear whatever they like.

The resort, which will be a kind of “semi-autonomous” destination, will relax the strict norms of women’s dressing, so they can finally wear a bikini to the beach, if that’s what they want.

A Telegraph report quoted the government saying that the resort will be “governed by laws on par with international standards”. This is said to be in a bid to turn the country into a tourist hub, akin to Dubai, where women are allowed to wear bikinis on the beach, making it a preferred Middle Eastern destination for international travellers.

The Prince is reportedly hopes that once business picks up, tourism would lessen the dependence on oil in the economy.

Tourists would also not need a visa to travel to the destination, and the resort will offer activities such as parachuting, trekking and rock climbing.

The Sun reports that the Red Sea project will also include diving attractions and a nature reserve, with some areas resembling the luxury hotels, islands and lagoons of the Maldives. This is aside from the usual fare of offerings for luxury travellers, such as wellness spas, alongside the options to spot rare wildlife such as Arabian leopards and falcons at a nature reserve.

There is also the Unesco World Heritage site of the ancient ruins of Mada’in Saleh.

A statement reportedly said that construction is scheduled to start in 2019, the first phase is expected to be completed by 2022. It hopes to host a million visitors annually by 2035.

This article was first published on Dhaka Tribune
 

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From its official tweeter account, UN Women tweeted an article posted online on Jun 29 2017, 4:17pm [1].

The floor is given to two young women wearing a hijab in France, who rant and rave at length about their plea, and in so doing, propagate false information regarding the laws in France. It is unfortunate that no one at UN women – which relayed the article (from (@UN_women) on their official twitter account) – took the time to check on the evidence in legal texts, that can be so easily verified.

The first paragraph of this article already contains several factual ‘mistakes’ – which I would rather call lies and deliberate disinformation, as they reproduce the distortion of facts that have been displayed on fundamentalist sites for several years. Let’s go over this first paragraph :
“In 2004, the French National Assembly voted to ban all overt symbols of religion in public school and government buildings. Many considered the move—which became colloquially known as the”headscarf ban“—a covert attack on the hijab and Muslim women specifically. In the years since, France has effectively banned the burka and niqab (Islamic headscarves that cover the face and head)”

It is not in 2004 that France voted a law forbidding political and religious signs in specific circumstances: it is in 1906.

Please note in passing that, at the time, the law could not possibly be ‘against Muslims’ as such immigration did not exist, it started slowly during and after WWI.

Article 1 of the law establishes that the secular Republic of France guarantees all citizens the right to freedom of belief and practice; and Article 2 establishes that the secular Republic does not recognize any cult and therefore will not entertain any kind of links with representatives of religions, nor will it fund them. It is crystal clear: citizens as individuals can believe and practice what they want, religions as institutions are not recognized partners in government.

Most articles in the international media relay erroneous information on the law on secularism in France without taking the pain to check on facts. Laziness prevails. For a thorough exposé, in English, on the founding principles of French secularism, see: ‘the Secularity and the Republic, a secular recasting of the state: principles and foundations’ by Henri Pena Ruiz, a leading French philosopher and expert on French secularism [2]

Indeed, according the 1906 law, in spaces that are emblematic of the secular French Republic, there should be no display of religious or political affiliation: people are there as equal citizens, they are not there as representatives of a specific community.
This includes state secular schools, and the ban affects everyone in the premises: teaching staff, administrative staff or pupils. France gives special importance to the fact that children should be educated as equal citizens, – whatever their origin, religion, etc…

Please note that in France, schooling is compulsory – all children have a right to education and must be educated, until age 16 – and education is free; from nursery school to university. This is a privilege that the secular Republic extends to citizens and to non-citizens as well. Students who repay their loans for decades in the USA will appreciate this…

Of course, like everywhere, there are also numerous private schools, including confessional ones, and everyone is free to avoid secular schools and to pay for their education.

The law that was passed in 2004, under President Sarkozy, actually weakens the 1906 law: from ‘no sign’ of religious or political affiliation, the text mellows to ‘no ostentatious religious sign’ (without defining what would be considered ‘ostentation’; it is wrongly translated as ‘overt’ in the article reproduced by UN Women). This is already a compromise, addressed to vocal Muslim fundamentalists. Far from being ‘a covert attack on the hijab and Muslim women specifically’, the law attempts to pander to their demands, without destroying too obviously a founding principle of the French Republic. Moreover, by using the ‘colloquially known’ concept invented and propagated by Muslim fundamentalist groups the world over: the “headscarf ban”, the author of the article shows her sources of inspiration.

And finally, still in the same first paragraph (!), we note the deliberate confusion between two laws, grounded in very different sources of law.

In the years since, France has effectively banned the burka and niqab (Islamic headscarves that cover the face and head.

This is presented as a second step after the ban of the veil in secular schools, as a consequence of secular principles. It is not. The law that bans face covering is not grounded in secularism. It is not applicable exclusively in specific locations that are emblematic of the secular Republic, but everywhere in France; it is based on security restrictions which started after the rise of attacks by Muslim fundamentalists. Everyone is concerned and not Muslims specifically: helmets worn when not on a motor bike, scarves hiding the lower half of the face or masks outside the time of Carnival are also targeted by this law.

Incidentally these are security provisions that have been passed in several countries in the Middle East and in South East Asia, – for just the same reasons and at the same time. Does the author conclude that these predominantly Muslim countries are ‘anti-Muslim’ too?

As the article entertains so much confusion in so many respects, let me reiterate that no one is prevented to wear a veil in France (it is part of the rights guaranteed under article 1 of the 1906 law: freedom of belief, freedom of practice), except in specific circumstances (in secular schools and Republic buildings when civil servants are in contact with the public and should represent secularism and equal treatment for all citizens). These two young women wearing hijabs are very obviously photographed in the street, not in a studio; anyone walking the streets in France will see hundreds of veiled women.

And as adults, after age 18, they attend university with their veil. No law forbids it. For those who doubt this fact, please check that National Front extreme right party has been, for years, precisely trying to impose a ban on the veil in universities – so far, in vain. Nor it is banned in hospitals.

Misinformation is a powerful tool at the service of Muslim fundamentalism.

Having gone through the first paragraph in great detail, I will spare readers a similar approach to the rest of the article which contains innumerable factual ‘mistakes’, all aimed at wrongly describing ‘Muslims’ as victims of secular France.

Let me end with this ironical remark: since both these young ‘victims’ intend to study medicine (gynaecology and obstetrics for one and neurosurgery for the other – i.e. 6 years in university to become a General Practioneer, followed by at least three years of specialization – which amounts to, at minimum, a total of ten years in university) it should be appreciated that their entire schooling has been for free, thanks to the secular Republic of France. How many European and North American countries offer the same facilities to every child? This comes in contradiction to the following – unfounded – statement:
‘as they get older the ban will prevent them from accomplishing far more important goals’

Finally, the article tries to get legitimacy from the fact that their ‘families are both from Algeria — a country with a long history of French colonization.’

As an Algerian citizen, I appreciate the acknowledgement that we fought a long 7 ½ year-long liberation struggle against French colonialism, for our independence.

I would like to remind readers that Algeria is also a country that fought Muslim fundamentalism for ten years, throughout the nineties, a war that made about 200 000 victims, most of them at the hands of fundamentalist armed groups, with a vast majority of women among them. Many of these women were slaughtered in most horrendous ways, like Daesh is doing now in the Middle East, for not accepting to wear the veil. They were beheaded, their heads paraded in the streets, they were tortured, burnt alive, mutilated, kidnapped as domestic and sexual slaves, etc…They did not give up and it is ultimately thanks to their resistance and popular resistance that fundamentalist armed groups were defeated and that we do not live under their rule in Algeria.
In their name, I demand some decency from the UN bodies that are supposed to defend women’s rights.

Source : siawi.org
 
 

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