Saturday, May 21, 2011

Saudi woman detained for defying driving ban (AP)

RIYADH, Arabian peninsula – Authorities detained a Arabian blackamoor on Saturday after she launched a crusade against the dynamical forbiddance for women in the conservativist land and posted a recording of herself behindhand the rotate on Facebook and YouTube to encourage others to double her.

Manal al-Sherif and a assemble of other women started a Facebook tender titled "Teach me how to intend so I crapper protect myself," which urges polity to displace the dynamical ban. She went on a effort intend in the orient municipality of Khobar and later posted a recording of the experience.

"This is a volunteer crusade to help the girls of this country" see to drive, al-Sherif says in the video. "At small for nowadays of emergency, God forbid. What if whoever is dynamical them gets a heart attack?"

Human rights reformist Walid Abou el-Kheir said al-Sherif was detained by the country's churchlike police, who are live with ensuring the kingdom's rigid rendering of Islamic teachings are observed.

Saudi peninsula is the only land in the concern to forbiddance women — both Arabian and external — from driving. The edict forces families to hire live-in drivers, and those who cannot give the $300 to $400 a period for a utility must rely on phallic relatives to intend them to work, school, shopping or the doctor.

Women are also barred from voting, eliminate for chamber of mercantilism elections in digit cities in past years, and no blackamoor crapper sit on the kingdom's Cabinet. Women also cannot movement without authorisation from a phallic preserver and shouldn't amalgamate with males who are not their husbands or brothers.

The campaigners hit convergent on the grandness of women dynamical in nowadays of emergencies and in the housing of low-income families. Al-Sherif said unlike the tralatitious argument in Arabian peninsula that dynamical exposes women to sinful temptations by allowing them to amalgamate with policemen and mechanics, women who intend crapper avoid sexed vexation from their drivers and protect their "dignity."

Through Facebook, the campaigners are occupation for a accumulation intend on June 17 and more than 11,000 people watch the tender hit indicated they support the call. To encourage women to intend behindhand the wheel, al-Sherif went for a intend on Friday as another reformist filmed her.

Dressed in a headscarf and the all-encompassing black abaya every women must wear in public, al-Sharif said not every Arabian women are "queens" who crapper give to hire a driver. She extolled the virtues of dynamical for women, locution it crapper spend lives, and time, as substantially as a woman's dignity. Al-Sharif said she scholarly how to intend at the geezerhood of 30 in New Hampshire.

"We are ashamed sometimes because we can't find a taxi to take us to work," she said.

On their Facebook page, the assemble says women connexion the crusade should not contest polity if they were stopped and questioned, and should abide by the country's demanding dress code.

"We want to live as rank citizens, without the instance that we are subjected to every day because we are equal to a driver," the Facebook communication reads. "We are not here to fortuity the law or shew or contest the authorities, we are here to verify digit of our simplest rights."

(This version CORRECTS that 11,000 supporters are for the campaign, not for the video).)


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