HUDSON SALUTES WAJEHA AL-HUWAIDER….A SAUDI DISSIDENT AND HEROINE
Hudson New York Salutes: Wajeha Al-Huwaider, Saudi Arabia
http://www.englishpen.org/writersinprison/writersinexile/wajehaalhuwaider/
http://www.hudson-ny.org/1930/wajeha-al-huwaider-saudi-arabia
Issues: Women’s rights and gender equality
How she delivers for women: In Saudi Arabia, where women cannot legally drive or even enter most public spaces without a male guardian, Al-Huwaider is an outspoken journalist, poet, and activist for women’s rights. In 2003, she was banned from publishing her work in most Saudi papers, but has continued to write online. She launched a series of “video campaigns,” circulated online, to decry practices like child marriage, polygamy, and the nation’s guardianship laws, which prevent women from traveling, studying, marrying or seeking healthcare without male permission. In 2008, she filmed herself driving, and the video attracted over 200,000 views on Youtube and sparked international calls for Saudi Arabia to lift its ban on women driving; the ban remains in place. Despite intense pressure from the Saudi government including arrests and interrogations, Al-Huwaider remains a vehement voice for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.
Learn more: http://www.englishpen.org/writersinprison/writersinexile/wajehaalhuwaider/
Wajeha al Huwaider
Wajeha Al-Huwaider has been subjected to harassment since May 2003, when she was first banned from publishing. A prominent Saudi Arabian author and journalist, Al-Huwaider wrote for the Arabic language daily Al-Watan and the English language daily Arab News. Al-Huwaider writes on political, social and cultural issues in the Arab world, including women’s rights, the treatment of the Shiite minority, and relations with the West. She also writers poetry and short stories. In 2004, she received the PEN/NOVIB Free Expression award.
On 20 September 2006, Al-Huwaider was arrested in her home by the Saudi secret police and questioned about a protest on women’s rights she was organising, despite the fact that the protest had already been cancelled due to fear of reprisals. Before she was released, Al-Huwaider was forced to sign a statement agreeing to cease all human rights activism and was also banned from travelling outside Saudi Arabia. The travel ban was lifted on 28 September.
To read some of Al-Huwaider’s writings, please click here
To read her article ‘Saudi Women Can Drive. Just Let Them’ (published in the Washington Post on 16 August 2009) please click here.
*** UPDATE: 10 July 2009. Wajeha al Huwaider is currently campaigning to end Saudi Arabia’s strict guardianship laws, according to which women must get permission from their closest male relative before doing “the most mundane of tasks”. For more information on Wajeha’s campaign, please click here. ***
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