Despite Her Release- Several Violations against Blogger Zainab Al-Hashemi
Earlier this week, it was announced that the detainee, Zainab Mohamed Al-Hashemi, had been released after spending nearly eight months in Saudi prisons with complete deprivation of all her legal and human rights.
We welcome Zainab’s release; however, the terms of her release confirm that the Saudi authorities continue to abuse her and violate her most basic rights guaranteed by international laws and human rights treaties to which Saudi Arabia is a party.
According to private sources, Al-Hashemi was released on condition that she would never travel outside the Kingdom, delete all her social media accounts and not participate in any activity of any kind inside the country.
These conditions are similar to her arbitrary and unlawful detention. Although the regime seems to have granted her freedom from detention, it violated her right to move freely, or o express her opinions or assemble.
According to Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to be protected by law from such interference or campaigns.
Article 13 states that everyone has the right to freedom of movement and to choose his place of residence within or outside the borders of the state, and everyone has the right to leave any country, including his country or return to it.
Articles 19, 20 and 21, also protect freedom of opinion, expression and assembly, as they stipulate that every person has the right to enjoy freedom of opinion and expression, without harassment, by any means regardless of borders, and every person has the right to freedom of participation in peaceful meetings and associations, and the right to participate in his country’s public affairs.
These and other articles in international treaties, charters and laws confirm that the terms of Zainab Al-Hashemi’s release are systematically violating all her basic human rights, and failure to address these violations by decision-makers in the world constitutes participation and complicity in the continued commission of more violations against detainees in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi singer, Zainab Al-Hashemi, was arrested as part of the fierce campaign of arrests last May, which affected a large number of activists, and actors on social media. Her news remained cut off without being presented to the judiciary or allowed to communicate with the family or the lawyer until the time of her release.
Zainab Al-Hashemi is considered one of the Saudi social media activists, where those activists are put at risk of security prosecution in Saudi Arabia.
According to private sources, Al-Hashemi was arrested after returning from a medical trip with her husband abroad, where she was forced to return to the funeral of her father, but the authorities arrested her and subjected her to enforced disappearance until this moment and to provide the family with any news or information about her legal position, circumstances and place. and the reasons for her detention.
We affirm that enforced disappearance is a crime punishable by international law and the Charter of the United Nations, which states that “no exceptional circumstance, whether it is a state of war or the threat of war, internal political instability, or any other exceptional case, may be invoked to justify enforced disappearance.”
We call on the governments of the world to take a serious stance that puts an end to the increasing violations of the Saudi regime, as its ongoing violations encourage it to commit more violations every day.
