A number of Saudi women drove cars yesterday in response to calls for nationwide action to break a traditional ban, unique to the ultra-conservative kingdom, according to reports on social networks.
The call to defy the ban that spread through Facebook and Twitter is the largest en masse action since November 1990, when a group of 47 Saudi women were arrested and severely punished after demonstrating in cars.
“We’ve just returned from the supermarket. My wife decided to start the day by driving to the store and back,” said columnist Tawfiq Alsaif on his Twitter page.
I took King Fahd Road (Riyadh artery) and then Olaya Street, along with my husband, I decided that the car for today is mine,” Maha al-Qahtani tweeted.
“This is a right for women that no law or religion bans... I went out to get my right, so that it would be up to me to drive or not,” she said by telephone.
Her husband Mohammed al-Qahtani tweeted that she carried her necessary belongings “ready to go to prison without fear”.
Another woman posted online a video of her driving after midnight Thursday as the first woman to answer the call for protest. The veiled woman drove along nearly-empty main roads until she parked at a supermarket.
All that we need is to run our errands without depending on drivers,” said the unnamed woman in the video. “I believe that the society is ready to welcome us.”
Police patrols were at normal levels on the sleepy streets of Riyadh on the first day of the weekend, an AFP photographer reported.
Many Saudi women had pledged on Facebook and Twitter to answer the call to defy the deeply entrenched ban.
But instead of staging demonstrations, which are strictly banned in the absolute monarchy, women with driving licences obtained abroad were encouraged to take individual action.
The response, however, appeared to be shy.
Veteran women’s rights activist Wajiha al-Huwaidar said yesterday that she did not expect a huge turnout as hoped for by sympathisers abroad because of the severe response by officials to women who have taken the lead in recent weeks.
“I do not expect something big as people abroad imagine,” she said, adding that jailing activist Manal al-Sherif and others has scared some women off.