A women's rights activist, detained in Saudi Arabia for a year and a half for publications on social networks, has lost all contact with the outside world, Amnesty International denounced this Wednesday.
“Saudi authorities must immediately release Manahel al-Otaibi, a 29-year-old sports coach, human rights defender and blogger, who has been forcibly disappeared since November,” a year after her incarceration, the rights organization said humans in a press release.
“Prison officials and other officials cut off all contact with his family and the outside world and refused to provide his family with information about his whereabouts and condition, despite their repeated requests,” he said. protests the NGO.
“Shortly before we lost contact with her, Manahel told us that she had been violently beaten by a fellow inmate,” said her sister Fawzia, quoted in the press release.
“Any activity promoting women’s rights is criminalized”
Manahel al-Otaibi was arrested in November 2022 for posting messages challenging male guardianship laws in the kingdom as well as a photo of herself without an abaya, a long loose dress covering the body that women must wear in public places.
She appeared last January before judges for having led a “propaganda campaign aimed at inciting young Saudi girls to denounce religious principles and rebel against the customs and traditions of Saudi society”, according to court documents consulted at the time by the AFP.
She was then referred to the Specialized Criminal Court, a court established in 2008 to handle terrorism-related cases.
This court “is known for conducting unfair trials and handing down harsh sentences, including the death penalty,” against political dissidents and human rights activists, Amnesty International said.
Last year, 170 death row inmates were executed in the kingdom.
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“This is the reality of the treatment of Saudi women that the authorities try to hide behind their media image.
Any activity promoting feminism and women's rights is criminalized,” Fawazia further denounces from the United Kingdom where she has gone into exile, so as not to risk the same prosecutions as her sister.
Often accused of repressing dissidents, Saudi Arabia imposed very harsh prison sentences in August and September 2022 on two women who relayed critical messages on social networks.
Since 2018, however, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has promised to work for the "empowerment of Saudi women", but Amnesty International's analysis of the legal texts in relation to this stated desire shows that they "perpetuate the male guardianship system and codifies discrimination against women in most aspects of family life.”
And justice is also working on it: in January last year, January 5, 2023, the Specialized Criminal Court sentenced Salma al Shebab, a doctoral student at the British University of Leeds and mother of two children, on appeal to 27 years in prison then 27 years of travel ban for having published tweets in favor of women's rights.
At first instance, she was sentenced to 34 years in prison.
His X account had 2,597 subscribers at the time of publication.