Saudi Arabia continues to relentlessly suppress all voices of women and men activists who are expressing their opinions on social media, in a fierce siege of inside reformist voices.
According to the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights sources, Saudi security forces arrested activist Najla Abdul Aziz Mohammed Al-Marwan on July 20, 2021, from her home in the capital Riyadh. Najla, a young divorced woman and a mother of two children. According to reports, Saudi Arabia is still forcibly hiding her after more than a month of detention, and the family has no information about her.
Najla's Twitter account shows that she welcomed and supported the call to demonstrate in conjunction with Arafa Day. A group of activists launched a hashtag called #Arafat_Day_protest, and called for participation in a campaign against the government's policies and the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with the goal of calling for the release of detainees, in addition to enabling young people's right to employment, tax removal, and more.
According to the European Saudi Human Rights Organization, the Saudi government's arbitrary detention of anyone who expresses their opinion reflects the nature of its repressive regime. The organization asserts that intimidation of activists and human rights defenders prevents documentation of all detention cases.
Although the organization has documented the arrest of activist Abdallah al-Mubaraki for supporting the same protest call, the organization fears other detentions that it has been unable to document due to the intimidation policy inside.
The organization stresses that arbitrary detention in Saudi Arabia raises concerns about the fate and safety of detainees, especially with the disturbing developments in the treatment of women activists and documentation of torture, harassment and other ill-treatment.