You're a 19-year-old girl. Like most teenagers, you occasionally disobey orders, as you're trying to find your place in the world.
This time, you get into a car with a male acquaintance. Then a group of seven men kidnap and gang-rape you both. Repeatedly.
You would expect the authorities to provide you with all the appropriate support and social services to help you deal with the trauma, while they prosecute the rapists, right?
Not in Saudi Arabia.
The female victim, whose only real "crime" was to get into a car with a man who was not a relative, has been sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes. 200 lashes! For getting into a car with someone she knew.
Her male friend was sentenced to 90 lashes.
The young woman's sentence was originally for 90 lashes, but a higher court increased her sentence after she appealed to the media for justice. Gotta keep those ladies suppressed and silent.
This woman is the victim of a horrible crime, but she is being treated as a criminal. They're also persecuting her lawyer.
Some are saying that the punishment is fair under Islamic Sharia law. But this is the 21st century. 200 lashes is nothing short of torture. It's not justice.
The following is the text of a press release on the subject by Human Rights Watch:
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Saudi Arabia: Rape Victim Punished for Speaking Out
Court Doubles Sentence for Victim, Bans Her Lawyer From the Case
(New York, November 17, 2007) – A court in Saudi Arabia doubled its sentence of lashings for a rape victim who had spoken out in public about her case and her efforts to seek justice, Human Rights Watch said today. The court also harassed her lawyer, banning him from the case and confiscating his professional license.
An official at the General Court of Qatif, which handed down the sentence on November 14, said the court had increased the woman's sentence because of "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media." The court sentenced the rape victim to six months in prison and 200 lashes, more than double its October 2006 sentence after its earlier verdict was reviewed by Saudi Arabia's highest court, the Supreme Council of the Judiciary.
Human Rights Watch called on King Abdullah to immediately void the verdict and drop all charges against the rape victim and to order the court to end its harassment of her lawyer.
Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist, with a focus on politics, human rights, and social justice. She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning human rights group Amnesty International, and her views appear regularly in a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites. Note that the ideas expressed here are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty International or any other organization with which she may be associated.
