Saudi women have bravely spoken out on the ‘hellish’ conditions inside the country’s prisons for ‘disobedient’ women, where inmates are sent by family members to be ‘rehabilitated’ through an alleged violent campaign of flogging, isolation and abuse.
Women have shared harrowing testimonies of being sent to the facilities as punishment for not ‘obeying’ sexual abuse at home, and then flogged or locked away in isolation until they ‘reconcile’ with their abusers.
The human rights group ALQST has documented wider cases of abuse and neglect; malnutrition; poor health and hygiene; mistreatment and brutality; excessive use of solitary confinement; and denigration.
Several cases of suicide or attempted suicide have been reported in recent years.
Sarah Al-Yahia, campaigning to abolish the homes, told the Guardian that her father had threatened to send her to a Dar al-Re’aya – literally ‘care homes’ – facility as a child ‘if I didn’t obey his sexual abuse’.
‘If you are sexually abused or get pregnant by your brother or father you are the one sent to Dar al-Re’aya to protect the family’s reputation,’ she explained.
Women may have to make the impossible choice between enduring abuse at home and the gruelling conditions inside the camps, she explained.
The care homes have existed since the 1960s, initially presented as a rehabilitative ‘shelter’ for women accused or convicted of certain crimes. They hold women between the ages of 7 and 30.
But today, rights groups warn they serve primarily as detention facilities for young women and girls who have ‘become delinquent or have been accused by their male guardians of disobedience’.
One young Saudi woman who fled into exile told the Guardian that the institutions are well known among women in the country.
‘It’s like hell,’ she said. ‘I tried to end my life when I found out I was going to be taken to one. I knew what happened to women there and thought ‘I can’t survive it.”
Sarah, now 38, said inmates have described being subjected to strip searches and virginity tests on arrival at the facilities, and given sedatives to put them to sleep.
She told the newspaper that women are addressed by numbers, not their names, and recalled one woman having received lashes for sharing their family name.
‘If she doesn’t pray, she gets lashes. If she is found alone with another woman she gets lashes and is accused of being a lesbian.
‘The guards gather and watch when the girls are being lashed.’
Harrowing video footage shows women climbing onto the roofs of facilities, trying to escape.
