Saudi women challenge driving ban

Saudi women challenge driving ban

2011-06-18 00:06:01 GMT+7 (ICT)

JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA (BNO NEWS) -- Saudi women got behind the wheel on Friday, defying a long standing ban on women operating vehicles in the kingdom.

According to CNN, hundreds of women joined the campaign "Women2Drive" to demand the right to drive in Saudi Arabia. There are no traffic laws that make it illegal for women to drive in the kingdom, yet religious edicts are often interpreted as a ban against female drivers.

A Saudi woman told CNN that her mother drove her and her sisters down Riyadh's main street on Thursday. "This is important for women here -- this is one of our rights," she was cited as saying.

Last month, authorities stopped Manal al Sharif, 32, for driving her car in the eastern town of Khobar. She said she was forced to sign a form in which she promised not to drive again and spent a week in jail.

Manal is part of the group of Saudi Arabian women who launched the campaign against the ban on women driving cars and called for women to drive their cars on Friday.

"Two-thirds of our salaries go to drivers and we keep one-third of our salaries to ourselves. There's no public transport either. You can't walk in the street, you can't drive your own car, there's no public transportation, you have to take a taxi or a private driver," Manal Al Sharif told Gulf News in May.

Al Sharif has not been charged, but the case remains open and she may be called back, according to human rights activist Waleed Abu Alkhair. "I think after what the police and the interior ministry did to Manal al Sharif, a lot of women became afraid," he said. "The Interior Ministry has put a lot of police on the street. They want to send a message to all women."

Strict segregation by sex means women in Saudi Arabia can't travel without a male relative or take public transportation. A Facebook page called "Women2Drive 17th June" offers some guidelines on participating in the driving movement, such as asking women to keep wearing a hijab, waiving the Saudi flag to show their patriotism and having a male present in the vehicle.

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