Saudi Arabia: Prisoner of conscience Loujain Hathloul's health condition is deteriorating in imprisonment.
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Saudi Arabia: Prisoner of conscience Loujain Hathloul's health condition is deteriorating in imprisonment.
September 1, 2020, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia -- Prisoner of conscience Loujain's health is deteriorating in her imprisonment due to her hunger strike. Loujain started her hunger strike 6 days ago protesting solitary confinement. The Coalition For Women In Journalism is concerned about the health and safety of Louijin and calls upon the Saudi authorities to release her immediately.
Lina Hathloul, Loujain’s sister, announced that her sister started a hunger strike due to being denied access to her lawyer or family visits since the beginning of the COVID-19 breakout. Lina expressed her apprehension concerning Louijin's fate in imprisonment.
Since June 6, Loujain hasn't contacted her family or sent them letters. Loujain’s family launched a social media campaign inquiring about her condition and calling upon the regime to either allow them to contact and visit her or to issue a statement clarifying her health conditions.
Loujain Hathloul was arrested in May 2018 from her home in Riyadh. She spent 10 months in arbitrary detention. On March 13, 2019, Louijin stood for trial for the first time. She is being accused of receiving foreign funding to impose foreign agendas, attending international conferences and events, and other burlesque claims. Loujain started her activism to demand women's right to drive in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Coming from a progressive family, she received immense support from mainly her father to be able to freely campaign for women’s rights.
Women in Saudi Arabia are now granted the right to drive but women's rights defenders say true reform will come when all human rights defenders who are jailed for expressing their opinion on the matter are released.
The Coalition For Women In Journalism released an alert on July 28, 2020, inquiring about Louijin’s safety upon some unconfirmed news circulating on social media platforms claiming that she died in jail, which the Saudi authorities have refused to deny nor confirm. We urged Saudi authorities to allow her to contact her family and assure them about her safety and demanded the immediate release of all the women human rights defenders and prisoners of conscience who have been arbitrarily kept behind bars in Saudi Arabia.
CFWIJ remains immensely concerned about the safety of Loujain and prisoners of conscience. We are monitoring the status of press freedom in Saudi Arabia and call upon UN human rights mechanisms to keep a close eye on the situation in KSA and to urge the regime to release women's human rights defenders and prisoners of conscience immediately.
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The Coalition For Women In Journalism is a global organization of support for women journalists. The CFWIJ pioneered mentorship for mid-career women journalists across several countries around the world, and is the first organization to focus on the status of free press for women journalists. We thoroughly document cases of any form of abuse against women in any part of the globe. Our system of individuals and organizations brings together the experience and mentorship necessary to help female career journalists navigate the industry. Our goal is to help develop a strong mechanism where women journalists can work safely and thrive.
Follow us on Instagram @womeninjournalism and Twitter @CFWIJ. Our website is WomenInJournalism.org and we can be reached at press@womeninjournalism.org
