Samar Badawi

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Samar Badawi (center) with Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton at the International Women of Courage Award (2012)

Samar Badawi ( Arabic سمر بدوي; * June 28, 1981 ) is a Saudi Arabian activist for women's rights .

Life

Samar Badawi is the sister of blogger and activist Raif Badawi . In 2008, she and her divorced son lived with their father, who abused them. She fled to a facility for victims of domestic violence in Jeddah. Her father then sued her for “disobedience” because she had violated his legal guardian rights under Saudi Arabian law. After Badawi failed to appear in court several times, an arrest warrant was issued against her. Badawi then lived with her brother for a while. During this time she met her future husband. In order to marry him, she needed her father's permission. Since he refused to give her, she sued him for abuse of his guardianship. On the first day of the trial, she was arrested for disobedience because of the pending arrest warrant and was held for seven months. The court eventually ordered both parties to reconcile on the condition that the father cease to use violence against his daughter, authorize her to marry and no longer bring unnecessary legal proceedings against her. Samar Badawi was the first woman in Saudi Arabia to get permission from her guardian in court.

Since then Badawi has been campaigning for the abolition of the guardian system. She also played a central role in the Women2Drive campaign , which fought for the right to drive for women, and filed a lawsuit against the Saudi Arabian government calling for women to vote .

In September 2014, Samar Badawi gave a speech to the UN Human Rights Council , during which she was repeatedly interrupted by members of the Saudi Arabian delegation. In December of the same year, Badawi was banned from leaving the country so that she could not travel to Brussels , where she wanted to take part in the European Union NGO Forum on Human Rights .

Badawi was married for some time to lawyer Waleed Abu al-Khair , who represented her and her brother Raif Badawi in court, before he himself was sentenced to 15 years in prison in an unfair trial, according to human rights organizations. They have a daughter together. The marriage ended in divorce, but Badawi continues to campaign for Waleed Abu al-Khair's release. According to Amnesty International, this engagement was the reason for her arrest again in January 2016. She was finally released after a long questioning.

She was arrested again in 2018. After Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland criticized this in the short message service Twitter on August 2 and demanded her immediate release, Riyadh reacted unusually harshly, spoke of "interference in internal affairs", expelled the Canadian ambassador from Saudi Arabia and withdrew his own ambassador from Canada. Saudi Arabia suspended the state airline's flights to Toronto, and froze business relationships, trade and academic programs between the two countries. 15,000 Saudi Arabian students in Canada should continue their studies in other countries. Programs for the medical treatment of Saudi Arabian citizens in Canada have also been stopped. The Saudi approach was seen as an attempt to deter other states from criticizing the country. Canada said it would not retract its criticism, and Freeland reaffirmed on August 6, 2018 that Canada would continue to stand up for human rights worldwide:

"Canada will always stand up for human rights, in Canada and around the world, and women's rights are human rights."

- Chrystia Freeland

Like the major Canadian media, the Washington Post praised the Trudeau government's steadfastness on this issue. The paper says:

“Canada recognizes that democracy and freedom of expression are universal values. It is positive that Ottawa does not shy away from addressing the human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia and that they are willing to pay a price for it. In an editorial, the newspaper urged the US government and other democracies not to abandon Canada. "

- Washington Post

On June 27, 2021, the human rights organization ALQST announced in London that Samar Badawi had been released from custody together with her colleague Nassima al-Sadah.

Awards

Web links

Commons : Samar Badawi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Saudi Arabia expels Canada's ambassador, freezes trade with Ottawa , Globalnews.ca, August 5, 2018
  2. ↑ a b Saudi Arabia: Where Fathers Rule and Courts Oblige , Human Rights Watch report , October 18, 2010, accessed August 8, 2018.
  3. ↑ a b Dietrich Alexander: Why a woman is suing the Saudi government. In: WeltN24 . March 23, 2012, accessed August 8, 2018 .
  4. ↑ a b c 2012 International Women of Courage Award Winners , US Department of State, accessed August 7, 2018.
  5. ↑ Amnesty International : Saudi Arabia: The authorities continue to punish activists for speaking up (PDF), December 4, 2014, accessed August 8, 2018.
  6. ↑ Amnesty International: Saudi Arabia: Activist Samar Badawi briefly arrested , January 13, 2016, accessed on August 8, 2018.
  7. ↑ AFP / tsv: Conflict: Saudi Arabia stops flights to Canada due to diplomatic crisis. In: welt.de . August 7, 2018, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Diplomatic crisis: Saudi Arabian patients have to leave Canada. In: Spiegel Online . August 8, 2018, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  9. ↑ August 8, 2018, engl. , The Globe and Mail
  10. ↑ August 7, 2018 , Washington Post (English, with a link to the Arabic version); see August 9, 2018, Süddeutsche Zeitung
  11. ↑ Women's rights activists are apparently released from prison , Der Spiegel, June 27, 2021.
personal data
SURNAME Badawi, Samar
SHORT DESCRIPTION Saudi Arabian activist for women's rights
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1981
PLACE OF BIRTH Saudi Arabia