Why women flee Saudi Arabia from Mohammed bin Salman

Saudi women need a political solution that guarantees their security rather than a state that allows them to attend football matches, go to the circus and go to the cinema

Saudi Arabia is facing a social problem that requires an urgent political solution. Runaways of women, estimated at more than a thousand cases, are now common in the media.

Rahaf al-Qunun, the 18-year-old woman who, to escape her family on a trip to Australia, barricaded herself in a hotel room at Bangkok airport, where she shared on social networks her distress and fears of being forced to return to Saudi Arabia, was placed in UN custody to be accepted as a refugee and eventually returned to Canada where she expects to lead a normal life.

Bringing the girls back

The Saudi government may have tried, without success, to force her back. In previous similar cases, Saudi embassy staff had intervened and forced the airport authorities to cooperate and bring the girls back. Rahaf may have been lucky, but Dina Ali Lasloom was not.

In April 2017, Lasloom had made his case public from Manila airport: “They confiscated my passport and locked me up for 13 hours… If my family comes, they will kill me. If I go back to Saudi Arabia, I’ll be killed. Help me, please. »

Thousands of kilometres from Saudi Arabia, the 24-year-old woman was arrested at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport during a stopover en route to Sidney. Two of her uncles, who arrived with the intention of bringing her back to Saudi Arabia, abducted her at the airport.