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Desperate and alone, Saudi sisters risk everything to flee oppression

Reverse Giraffe

Reverse Giraffe

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,853
Orlando, FL
Hong Kong (CNN)The night they fled, Reem and Rawan didn't dare sleep.

It was September 6, 2018. The two Saudi sisters were on a family vacation in Colombo, Sri Lanka. For weeks, they had helped their mother organize the trip, feigning excitement at the possibility of two weeks away from Riyadh, but knowing that if all went to plan, they'd never go back.

Failure was not an option. Every step of their escape from Saudi Arabia carried the threat of severe punishment or death.

"We knew the first time, if it's not perfect, it will be the last time," Reem says.

CNN has changed the sisters' names and is not showing their faces, at their request for their safety.

The sisters say years of strict Islamic teaching and physical abuse at home had convinced them that they had no future in a society that places women under the enforced guardianship of men, and limits their aspirations.

"It's slavery, because whatever the woman will do it's the business of the male," Rawan says.

...

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/20/asia/saudi-arabia-sisters-flee-hong-kong-intl/index.html
 
Morrigan

Morrigan

Spear of the Metal Church
Member
Oct 24, 2017
34,352
Incredible story. These women are so brave. I hope Canada takes them in the same way they did Rahaf Mohammed.

The sisters say the men led them to another area of the airport, where their lawyer Michael Vidler says they canceled the women's Cathay Pacific flight to Melbourne and booked them, without their knowledge, on an Emirates flight to Riyadh, via Dubai.
Cathay Pacific tells CNN that the sisters' flight was canceled by representatives of SriLankan Airlines.
SriLankan Airlines told CNN its staff members canceled the flight at the "explicit request" of the Saudi Consulate, which had already booked the sisters on the flight to Riyadh.
The airline said consular officials told its staff the women's father had phoned and said the sisters needed to go back to Saudi Arabia "as soon as possible" as their mother was terminally ill.
The women knew their mother wasn't ill and were quite sure there was nothing wrong with their visas.
"We allege that they were the subject of an attempted kidnapping in an international airport in a restricted area," Vidler tells CNN. "The Saudi Consulate was actively trying to deceive them."
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Man, these people are pure evil. Basically the villains of a movie.

Also, that selfie (with niqab)'s caption says "The women shared selfies they'd taken of their life before they fled. They wore niqabs in public from the age of 11 and at home were told to wear long gowns, so as not to tempt their brothers."

....Tempt their brothers?? >_<
 
SmokeMaxX

SmokeMaxX

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,336
I've seen similar stories to this recently. I really don't understand why Saudi Arabia cares if people flee?
 
Thrill_house

Thrill_house

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,615
Brave girls. I wish the world would shun/sanction the living hell out of them. I can't wait until fossil fuels areva thing of the past and these shit heels have no leverage
 
Verelios

Verelios

Member
Oct 26, 2017
14,877
Reverse Giraffe said:
You... uhm... Don't think its incredibly sexist to compare women to a flock of sheep? Surely I'm misunderstanding you?
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Wait, what? The analogy describing sexism is sexist?

God damn, SA consulate are evil as hell. How do you change someone else's flight in an international airport and then try to get them on a flight unaware? Evil.
 
lunarworks

lunarworks

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,156
Toronto
Morrigan said:
Also, that selfie (with niqab)'s caption says "The women shared selfies they'd taken of their life before they fled. They wore niqabs in public from the age of 11 and at home were told to wear long gowns, so as not to tempt their brothers."

....Tempt their brothers?? >_<
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If you think about it, with every woman and girl in public wearing a niqab, they'd be the only girls their brothers would see. The adolescent brain needs something to fantasize about.

It's not a healthy social model.
 
Heshinsi

Heshinsi

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,093
SmokeMaxX said:
I've seen similar stories to this recently. I really don't understand why Saudi Arabia cares if people flee?
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Because they view women as property. They had an app where men can keep tabs on the movement of the women of their families, and be notified when their movements diverged from routes the men preassigned for them. It's a system of perpetual juvenilising from birth to death for women there.
 
Heshinsi

Heshinsi

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,093
Casualcore said:
There's more to it than the embarrassment of escaped sheep. It's a country with a history of human rights abuses and brutal reactions to dissent, that's trying to clean up it's global image recently. Women leaving and saying it sucks there is a serious blow to that narrative.
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So you think kidnapping them back to jail and make disappear would do wonders for their image? Saudi Arabia does not give two shits about their image. While clown face was being paraded around like some sort of reformer, he was busy jailing the very women whose protest caused the change he implemented. Also, they send 15 men hit squads to cut journalists up in their own consulate in foreign countries. Does that seem like the behaviour of someone who cares about their public image?
 
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