By IANS
Mumbai : Rights activists Thursday staged a silent demonstration outside the Saudi Arabian consulate here to protest the “inhuman” interpretation of laws that resulted in a gang-rape victim being penalised in that country.
In a memorandum to the consulate, the UN and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Mumbai-based Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) expressed concern at the fate of the 19-year-old female victim, who was initially ordered to be lashed but later sentenced to six months in jail for allegedly being with an unrelated male in a car at the time of the rape.
“We are dismayed and deeply concerned about the victim, who was not only lashed but sentenced to a six-month jail term for telling her story to the media. We are equally dismayed that her attorney Abdulrahman al-Lahim’s law licence was being revoked for his disclosure of the case to the media,” said Teesta Setalvad of CJP.
She said that a Saudi court last year sentenced six men who were convicted of raping the Shia woman to imprisonment between one and five years.
Following a retrial, the new verdict increases jail terms for the six convicts, while the woman was further punished for “her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media”.
“The CJP in the defence of women’s rights is running an international campaign against this shocking incident in Riyadh,” Setalvad told IANS Thursday.
“A humane approach is the need of the hour to protect the victim. We are distressed by the fact that far from upholding the rights of the woman the Saudi authorities say the trial and sentences are in keeping with the provisions of the Sharia and, therefore, fair,” the social activist said.
Under the present system, Saudi Arabia enforces a strict Islamic doctrine that forbids unrelated men and women from associating with each other, bans women from driving and makes it mandatory for them to cover themselves from head to toe in public.