Salma al-Shehab, a 34-year-old mother of two and former PhD student at the University of Leeds, who in 2021 was handed a 34-year-long jail sentence for tweeting her support for women’s human rights defenders in her native Saudi Arabia, has gone on hunger strike. Salma was arrested in January 2021 while on a visit home from the UK to see her family. She then faced months of interrogation over her activity on Twitter. In March 2022 she was sentenced to six years in prison by the country’s Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) under the vague wording of the country’s Counter-Terrorism Law, but this was increased on appeal to an unprecedented 34-year term followed by a 34-year travel ban. The SCC was originally established to try terrorism cases but its remit has widened to cover people who speak out against human rights violations in the country. Salma is one of a number of people tried by the SCC who have been handed farcically long sentences for simply expressing their human rights. The SCC is the main tool with which Saudi Arabia has effectively criminalised freedom of expression. Salma has been joined on hunger strike by seven other prisoners of conscience, who have been handed jail terms longer than those which would be handed out to hijackers threatening to bomb a plane. In Saudi Arabia, prisoners of conscience often go on hunger strike to protest their treatment. Those resorting to this include women’s rights activist Loujain Al-Hathloul, the blogger Raif Badawi, the academic and human rights defender Mohammad al-Qahtani, the writer Muhammad al-Hudayf and the lawyer Walid Abu al-Khair. Therefore call on the international community, especially states with diplomatic leverage such as the United States and the United Kingdom, to press the Saudi authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Salma al-Shehab and quash her conviction, as well as release all others currently detained in the kingdom for the peaceful exercise of their fundamental rights. Credit: Brut.
Signatories:
- ACAT-France
- Access Now
- ALQST for Human Rights
- Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB)
- Amnesty International
- ARTICLE19
- Danish PEN
- Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN)
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- English PEN
- European Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (ECDHR)
- European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR)
- FEMENA
- Freedom House
- The Freedom Initiative
- Freedom Now
- Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR)
- Human Rights First
- Human Rights Foundation (HRF)
- Human Rights Sentinel
- IFEX
- The International Campaign for Freedom in the United Arab Emirates (ICFUAE)
- International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
- International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
- MENA Rights Group
- Peace Action
- PEN America
- PEN International
- Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED)
- Red Line for Gulf (RL4G)
- SMEX (Social Media Exchange)
- Scholars at Risk
- The Tor Project
- Vigilance for Democracy and the Civic State
- World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
