Princess: Stepping Out of the Shadows, стр. 57
Despite these positive developments for two very well-deserving women, my mind was in turmoil. Although these days I am as joyful a woman as one can be, awaiting all the promised changes that will improve and enrich the lives of Saudi women, I am as dejected a woman as I can be when it comes to human-rights abuses in my country. Women’s rights and human rights are like a hand in a glove in chilly weather – each is necessary for the other to properly function. While women in Saudi Arabia have good reason to feel hope in their hearts that our Crown Prince will keep his promises, the young men and women who have focused their energies on freedom of speech have few hopes of relief from persecution.
All who read about civilization are keenly aware that human advancement is never complete. It is forever ongoing. A confident society encourages and compels its youth to think for themselves. It is the young who replace the old in all things. It is the job of the youth to push aside old laws no longer appropriate for society, creating more fitting regulations for their times and their circumstances. This shifting is as old as time itself.
Saudi Arabia is a kingdom bubbling with the educated. Since the days of King Faisal, education for Saudis has been a top priority and the number of our educated youth proves that our government’s efforts to provide education for all Saudis has been successful. Unless fathers forbid it, even girls in small villages have access to education. Therefore, there is hope that most females in my country receive at least a primary education.
In the kingdom, school is free for the first twelve years. Children may attend kindergarten, if the parents so choose, but at age six children are enrolled for six years before graduating from primary school. While these schools are not co-educational, as they are in the West, enrolment for boys is 99 per cent, while for girls it is 96 per cent.
After primary level has been completed, schools for intermediate education are also free and available to all, although only 47 per cent of girls enrol, while 95 per cent of boys attend. Three additional free years of secondary education automatically follow. This is when students are given a choice to continue general education studies or specialize at technical institutes. The gross enrolment for the final three years of free education is 91 per cent.
Seventy per cent of students who graduate from secondary education continue to university within Saudi Arabia, while approximately 5,000 Saudi students are awarded assistance to travel abroad. Most girls are now allowed to study abroad for the first time since King Khalid’s reign in the early 1980s, when a law was passed against this.
Once educated, however, many of these young people are unable to find a job.
More and more, this generation do tend to seek greater personal and political freedoms so that they can be involved with important decisions made in this kingdom. But to my growing despair whenever a Saudi citizen pushes for reforms they bring danger to themselves and their loved ones, for our government is now targeting anyone who criticizes the regime, delivering extreme punishments for speaking out.
For the past few years, educated, thinking and compassionate individuals have been quietly appalled as arrest after arrest has occurred of young Saudis who are demanding personal freedoms unknown to most in our kingdom. These young men and women have given up their freedoms after calling for freedom. While some are being held in prison without charges being filed, many have been convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.
It is these good Saudis – who want nothing more than the freedom to speak what is on their minds – that are now on my mind. It is a major problem and troubles me greatly. I dearly want to help them in some manner, but I am not certain what form that help might take. Meanwhile, I decided to commemorate these courageous ones by thinking about them, talking about them and helping to make the world aware of their plight.
My mind lingered upon a studious-looking Saudi man who has a serious view of life. Nadhir al-Majid is a teacher and a prominent Saudi writer. This unassuming and peaceful man was left in relative peace by the authorities until he expressed his independent view on two important topics that affect all Saudis: politics and human rights. He then dared to participate in peaceful protests over discrimination against Saudi Arabia’s minority Shia community. Al-Majid also communicated with various international human-rights organizations and expressed his view in the articles he wrote that Saudi Arabians should be allowed to protest peacefully and that writers should be allowed to express their support for such protests. While none of al-Majid’s activities appeared to be worthy of being charged as a crime, for he wants the best for our country, our Saudi government, composed of men who are of my blood, did not share my view. Al-Majid was tried in court on a variety of charges, such as ‘failing to obey the ruler’, but was not allowed an attorney to represent him – neither was his family allowed to attend his court hearing. After this sham court case was heard, al-Majid found himself facing seven years in a bleak Saudi prison, to be followed by a seven-year ban on travel.
Abdulaziz al-Shubaily is another young Saudi who will spend the most productive years of his life in prison. Looking at a photograph of the smiling and evidently good-natured al-Shubaily, one would never guess the seriousness of his quest to help those being wrongfully imprisoned in my country. Al-Shubaily is a prominent Saudi human-rights advocate who, as a lawyer, used his considerable skills to represent other Saudi men who were held in prison for years without charge. Al-Shubaily