DUBAI (AFP) — A recent Saudi court ruling sentencing a woman to six
months in jail and 200 lashes despite being gang-raped highlights the
injustice faced by women in the ultra-conservative kingdom, women
rights activists said.
"Sure, there is injustice against women in courts. It is a bitter
situation that Saudi women have to endure," Saudi activist Wajiha
al-Hweider said on Thursday, after the court ruling received
widespread publicity.
"The kingdom is in an embarrassing position. King (Abdullah) should
step in and stop this farce," Hweider told AFP, adding that the
judicial system, which is based on Islamic law, should be reformed.
Despite being raped by seven men who kidnapped her with a male
companion at knife-point, the 19-year-old woman was sentenced in
November 2006 to 90 lashes.
The judge sentenced her for being in a car with a man who was not her
relative, a taboo in the ultra-conservative desert kingdom.
But her story hit international headlines last week when her sentence
was increased to six months in jail and 200 lashes after she spoke to
the media.
Except for immediate family members, men and women cannot mix in Saudi
Arabia, which applies a rigorous doctrine of Sunni Islam known as
Wahhabism. Women must also cover themselves from head to toe in public
and are banned from driving or travelling without permission from
their male guardian.
The men were initially sentenced to one to five years in jail, but
those terms were also increased last week to between two and nine
years.
Their sentences fell short of the death penalty -- which could be
imposed in a rape conviction -- due to the "lack of witnesses" and the
"absence of confessions," the justice ministry said on Tuesday.
"The judge does not have a written law. It is a matter of luck. You
are lucky if the judge is a moderate and fears God," said Hweider, an
outspoken US-educated activist who leads a group of women demanding
the right to drive.
Hatoon al-Fassi, a history lecturer at King Saud university in Riyadh
and another women rights activist, agreed that women suffer from the
lack of written laws, which subjects rulings to the discretion of
judges.
"It all depends on the reasoning of the judge," she told AFP.
"It is good that the case has taken an international dimension. It is
shameful that such a case could have stayed unspoken of... This is a
ruling that has treated the victim as a culprit," she said.
"Such logic is so distant from Islam. It is the result of a
male-chauvinist reasoning," she charged.
Hweider highlighted the humiliation faced by women inside the
courtroom, saying that a judge, who is always a clergyman, addresses
only her male guardian.
"The woman does not have the right to represent herself in a court.
She enters the court covered entirely in black. Some judges do not
even allow her to speak," she said.
She pointed out cases of forgery where men took women to court to
impersonate others only to make false claims. "It helped some men in
stripping their sisters of inheritance, for example," she said.
A male guardian, who could be the woman's father, brother, husband,
uncle, son, grandfather or grandson, literally controls her life.
"A woman is treated always as a minor and as a second-class citizen.
She needs a male guardian," Fassi said.
She pointed out that she even needs her male guardian to obtain her
identity card or passport and that women are not allowed to enter
government departments.
"Here, the son is the male guardian of his mother if she is a widow or
divorced. She would need his written approval for anything... She has
no value," said Hweider.
Although she acknowledges that some Saudi women have been successful
in some professions, she said that a woman "would lose everything if
the male guardian decided that she had to stay home."
"And for a Saudi judge, I am part of the property of my male
guardian," she lamented.
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