Saudi laws strip women of children custody, leave them stranded

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
25 Sep 10:03
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The Saudi system never fails to rip women of their rights, from freedom of expression, with women sentenced to life in the shadows, to custody laws.

MBS targeted Twitter users in his repression campaign.

Carly Morris, a US citizen, traveled to Saudi Arabia with her little daughter in the summer of 2019, expecting to spend some quality time with the girl's Saudi father, Morris' ex-husband.

After landing in Riyadh, Morris' ex-husband seized their travel documents and arranged for the girl, eight-year-old Tala, to become a Saudi citizen, ensuring he could bar her from leaving.

Three years later, Morris is trapped in the desert kingdom, under a regime that highlights the power men like her husband enjoy over women as per the country's so-called guardianship laws.

Morris is stranded in a country where she does not understand the language and cannot legally work, with her funds depleted and her credit cards maxed out. To make ends meet, she has had to borrow money and food from strangers.

"I will not leave without my daughter," Morris, 34, told AFP in a phone interview from the house her ex-husband rents for them in the central city of Buraidah.

The Saudi system is stacked against women in Morris' situation, particularly foreigners, who are frequently forced to choose between staying in the country with their children and returning home without them, according to lawyers and experts.

Not a first

Under the guise of easing notorious guardianship laws in Saudi Arabia that greatly restrict women's ability to travel and work, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler, has coupled the alleged easing with conditions that bring Saudi women to square one.

Human rights groups note that women, for example, still require a male guardian's permission to drive a car and face discrimination when it comes to custody disputes, despite claims that this is not the case.

Hala Al-Dosari, an activist and former visiting scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, slammed the recent changes and stressed that they still "did not limit a man's ability to have the upper hand..."

"Absolute authority over children is given to the father to decide where to live, (go to school) and travel, and not to the mother," she said.

According to Bethany Al-Haidari of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, Morris is not alone and she is not the only case facing such a long, painstaking ordeal.

"There are countless women and children trapped in similarly degrading conditions in Saudi Arabia," she said.

"Legal trouble" sneaking in

Out of nowhere, women in Morris' situation suddenly find themselves facing legal trouble they have no knowledge of.

This month, Saudi prosecutors summoned Morris and informed her that she was under investigation for "disturbing public order."

Morris believes that the alleged "public disturbance order" has to do with taking her case to social media. After all, in MBS' dictionary, expressing your views on a social media outlet amounts to a crime punishable by law.

Not only that. Morris was even informed a few days ago that she had been placed under a travel ban, according to an electronic notice seen by AFP, thus preventing her from leaving the country if she ever decides so.

The family of Morris's ex-husband did not respond to requests for comment.

MBS' crackdown: A Saudi mother sentenced to 34 years for Tweeting

MBS' crackdown on social media activists for the mere reason of tweeting or sharing posts is nothing new.

Earlier in August, a Saudi university student who had returned home for a vacation was sentenced to 34 years in prison for following and retweeting dissidents and activists on her personal Twitter account.

The sentence was handed down by Saudi Arabia's so-called "special terrorism court" just weeks after US President Joe Biden's visit to the Kingdom, which human rights activists warned could give Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) a green light to intensify his crackdown on dissidents and other pro-democracy activists.

The case poses evidence of how MBS has targeted Twitter users in its repression campaign, while also controlling a significant indirect stake in the US social media company through Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF).

In MBS' playbook, Tweeting is a crime

Salma Al-Shehab, a 34-year-old mother of two, aged four and six, was initially sentenced to three years in prison for the "crime" of using an internet website to "cause public unrest and destabilize civil and national security."

However, an appeals court handed down the new sentence - 34 years in prison followed by a 34-year travel ban - after a public prosecutor requested that the court consider other alleged crimes.

Al-Shehab was not a prominent or particularly vocal Saudi activist, neither in Saudi Arabia nor in the United Kingdom.

This incident was followed by another when another woman was jailed for using Twitter.

Court records reviewed by a human rights organization show that a second Saudi Arabian woman, Nourah bint Saeed Al-Qahtani, has been sentenced to decades in jail for using social media to "violate the public order" by the country's terrorism court.

A specialized criminal court allegedly found Al-Qahtani guilty of "using the internet to tear [Saudi Arabia's] social fabric" and sentenced her to 45 years in prison as a result, according to documents obtained and examined by Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn).

Dawn informed the Guardian of its findings, which the latter said had been corroborated by Saudi sources, in hopes that the public would be able to shed light on Al-Qahtani's case.

Abdullah Alaoudh, the director for the Gulf region at Dawn, said Saudi authorities appear to have imprisoned Qahtani for “simply tweeting her opinions,” adding that “it is impossible not to connect the dots between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s meeting with [US] President Biden last month in Jeddah and the uptick in the repressive attacks against anyone who dares criticize the crown prince or the Saudi government for well-documented abuses."