On June 6th 2018, the Saudi government arrested the female human rights defender Nouf Abdul Aziz Aldusari. Her arrest was carried out after the security forces raided her house and was taken to unknown place, as the information referred.
Nouf had expected her arrest, as she asked to publish a letter in case something happened to her, where she mentioned that the reason behind her detention is because of helping the victims of violations and her standings of defending human rights. Days after her detention, on July 9th 2018, Saudi Arabia arrested the female human rights defender Miaa Alzahrani for publishing her friend article and solidarity with her.
Since 2008, Nouf has started the journey of writing and journalism in many media institutions, playing various roles, according to her clarifications in an interview with a local electronic newspaper in August 2011. She had a great presence through interacting with abroad activities, such as choosing her among the ambassadors of “Taghred” initiative that aims to enrich the digital Arabic content.
Nouf has always been launching a lot of human rights campaigns that support opinion detainees, and participated in a bold step to raise the women’s political participation through her going to register in the voters’ record for the municipal elections in 2011; although women officially were not allowed to vote at that time but only in 2015. Her interest in human rights fields were different to get out of the prevailing interests, as she had participated in writing about the rights of people with disabilities and paid attention to the stateless “Al Bedon”
Moreover, she presented various articles, in which was emerged through her interest in reforming public affairs. In January 2018 she wrote an article (when the well is stolen and the law conspires) as a result of the case known by #thekiller_of Tabuk_girl. Also, in October 2017, she presented a joint article on documenting the struggle of women in Saudi Arabia by exploiting the space available on the internet: (documenting women’s right movement on the internet in Saudi Arabia). She has contributed in many news reports on the reality of arbitrary detentions of human rights defenders.
At the level of Gulf and the Arab world, Nouf has shown numerous solidarity standings, as the last background she put on her Twitter was a picture from the Emirates human rights defender account, Ahmad Mansour, who is spending 10 years imprisonment sentence for his human rights activity.
Some Tweets, gathered by the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights, shows various standing of Nouf Bent Abdulaziz activity, such as supporting the Palestinian case “ always and ever whoever accepted or refused and no excuse for the enemies of the right #Jerusalem_is_the_eternal_capital_of_Palestine”. She also criticized the judiciary as she wrote “ they don’t want to put cameras because they know that the judiciary is not fair”, and demanded of freedom to express where she tweeted quotes included “we will not benefit from silencing the voice that we hate, but we gave legitimacy to others to silence us”. Furthermore, she cleared in her tweets her standing between the oppressor and the oppressed, and her continuous support for the people with oppressed rights: “I haven’t acquiesced to any authority, didn’t flatter any official and didn’t give my back to any oppressed, this is a great honor”. On her tweets, Nouf supported the opinion detainees and reported the violations they suffered from.
In addition to Twitter, Nouf published her articles and standings through Facebook and in her personal blog that was blocked later on, in which she used to write about human rights violations and about the accusations that Jeddah reformers detainees had faced. Nouf has confirmed in her publications that her personal accounts were hacked, in an attempt to intimidate her or close her accounts.
The detention of the two female human rights defenders NoufAldusari and MiaaAlzahrani came after a detention campaign started in mid-May 2018 included a number of female and male activists in the fields of human rights and women’s rights.
To take the last sip of the cup, the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights believes that the case of the defender Nour, assures both the danger and the continuous threat on activists in Saudi Arabia, as during all the last eight years, she was under the possibility of detention at any moment. Besides, 6 weeks after her and her friend MaiaaAlzahrani detention, without any information with the civil society individuals and groups inSaudi Arabia regarding their legal situations, indicate that the arrests in Saudi Arabia is a complete absence of the activist and his news. Adding, this absence refers to the level of secrecy practiced by the detainees’ friends and relatives as a result of the carrot-and-stick situation on which the Saudi government has mastered.
