Women driving advocates drop demonstration plans

October 26, 2013

Jeddah, Oct 26: Organizers of the women’s “Oct. 26 Driving Campaign” abandoned their plans late Friday by canceling Saturday’s driving demonstration throughout Saudi Arabia following intense pressure from the Ministry of Interior that said it will arrest participants. “Out of caution and respect for the Interior Ministry’s warnings ... we are asking women not to drive tomorrow and to change the initiative from an Oct. 26 campaign to an open driving campaign,” activist Najla Al-Hariri told Agence France Presse on Friday.

The wire service reported that several women said they had received telephone calls from the ministry, which issued a statement on Thursday warning online activists Friday that it may apply cyber-laws that ban political dissent to individuals supporting the women’s driving campaign scheduled today. Cyber-law violations could result in a five-year prison sentence. Interior Ministry spokesman Gen. Mansour Al-Turki said the Kingdom’s traffic laws will be enforced.

“It is known that women in Saudi Arabia are banned from driving, and laws will be applied against violators and those who demonstrate in support of this cause,” Al-Turki said. There have been several government warnings this week about the driving campaign, coinciding with Saudi women posting social videos of them driving on Saudi streets usually with a mahram in the passenger seat. Yet the warnings signal a tough crackdown on traffic law violators.

Organizers have been careful about the campaign, urging women to drive separately and not engage in mass driving exhibitions or demonstrations. Dozens of women this week also applied for driver’s licenses at Dallah Driving School in Jeddah and had three women at a time approach the counter and ask for an application. Even early Friday, organizers and participants vowed to drive today despite the mounting pressure from the Ministry of Interior and anti-driving proponents, which are mostly men commenting on social media websites. Fatima Saleh, who had planned to participate in the action, said women do not want to cause problems.

“In fact, women driving will help reduce traffic congestion. My dream is to drive legally here by 2014,” she said. Maryam Al-Rubian, a Saudi woman who was participating in the campaign, said: “I hope that the Saudi authorities realize that women also have basic rights such as the right to drive, and are as good as men at driving cars. We are not comfortable hiring taxis. Taxi drivers harass us on a daily basis.”

Saudi Arabia does not have legislation barring women from driving. Many Saudi women have posted footage of them driving on social media websites including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. They have called on women with foreign driver’s licenses to join the campaign. Abdullah Al-Saidi, a Riyadh-based

engineer, said: “Women should be allowed to drive in the Kingdom because they also have roles to play in society. In fact, many are running their own companies and need this mobility.” Earlier, three women Shoura Council members called for an end to the ban; while 200 scholars visited the royal court in Jeddah to make a case against women driving.

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UN condemns Israeli regime’s ‘organized torture’ against Palestinians

News Network

November 30,2025

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has condemned the Israeli regime for enforcing a policy of “organized torture” against Palestinians.

In a report published on Friday, CAT stated that the occupying regime enforces a deliberate policy of “organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” against Palestinian abductees, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

The committee expressed “deep concern over repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence” inflicted on Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners were degraded by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on,” systematically denied medical care, and subjected to excessive restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation,” the report added.

CAT also condemned the routine application of “unlawful combatants law” to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

More than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian and international human rights groups, with 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” meaning they are imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.

The report highlighted the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand,” noting that while Israel sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, even younger children have been abducted.

Children designated as security prisoners face severe restrictions on family contact, may be subjected to solitary confinement, and are denied access to education, in clear violation of international law.

The committee further suggested that Israel’s policies across the Occupied Territories constitute collective torture against the Palestinian population.

“A range of policies adopted by Israel in the course of its continued unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading living conditions for the Palestinian population,” the report said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the systematic killing and torture of Palestinian abductees in Israeli prisons, urging international action to halt these abuses.

Citing human rights data, Hamas stated that 94 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This reflects an organized criminal approach that has turned these prisons into direct killing grounds to eliminate our people,” the resistance movement said.

Hamas called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to immediately pressure Israel to end crimes against prisoners and uphold their rights as guaranteed by all international conventions and norms.

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