Scrutable

Salma al-Shehab has been imprisoned for 34 years and given a travel ban for a further 34 years for the 'crime' of following and retweeting Saudi dissidents and activists. According to the Freedom Initiative, this is the longest sentence given to a Saudi women's rights defender.

From everything I can tell her 'activism' was simply retweeting a few tweets to her 2,597 followers. I say that not to denigrate her actions, but to point out how little it takes to face the ire of the Saudi regime.

From the Guardian,

Khalid Aljabri, a Saudi who is living in exile and whose sister and brother are being held in the kingdom, said the Shehab case proved Saudi Arabia’s view that dissent equates to terrorism.

“Salma’s draconian sentencing in a terrorism court over peaceful tweets is the latest manifestation of MBS’s ruthless repression machine,” he said, referring to the crown prince. “Just like [journalist Jamal] Khashoggi’s assassination, her sentencing is intended to send shock waves inside and outside the kingdom – dare to criticise MBS and you will end up dismembered or in Saudi dungeons.”

It is worth noting this paragraph also.

“It is ironic,” Al-Haidari adds, “that while Loujain’s release was celebrated, Salma remained behind bars on the ground that she called for that very release. It’s a pattern for Saudi authorities to ensure that women activists can’t celebrate or take credit for any of their hard-won victories.”

You see something similar in China, that the authorities may decide to do something to quell discontent, or remove the embarrassment of appearing so far out of step with the rest of the world, or just because it eventually realises it is the right thing to do. But it still punishes those who publicly asked for it or drew attention to the discontent or embarrassment.

It is the extremity each goes to, to deny that the state might have made errors that have to be fixed. It can admit only to a scattering of corrupt officials who have to be punished, but only if they are sufficiently disconnected from the centre of power.

Fishnut wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 4:09 pm Salma al-Shehab has been imprisoned for 34 years and given a travel ban for a further 34 years for the 'crime' of following and retweeting Saudi dissidents and activists. According to the Freedom Initiative, this is the longest sentence given to a Saudi women's rights defender.

From everything I can tell her 'activism' was simply retweeting a few tweets to her 2,597 followers. I say that not to denigrate her actions, but to point out how little it takes to face the ire of the Saudi regime.

From the Guardian,

Khalid Aljabri, a Saudi who is living in exile and whose sister and brother are being held in the kingdom, said the Shehab case proved Saudi Arabia’s view that dissent equates to terrorism.

“Salma’s draconian sentencing in a terrorism court over peaceful tweets is the latest manifestation of MBS’s ruthless repression machine,” he said, referring to the crown prince. “Just like [journalist Jamal] Khashoggi’s assassination, her sentencing is intended to send shock waves inside and outside the kingdom – dare to criticise MBS and you will end up dismembered or in Saudi dungeons.”

The term patriarchy is used in many different ways. But for Saudi Arabia it seems to best describe a society organised around men having control over women. This is how that system is enforced.