News: Saudi warns women activists not to defy driving ban

                       

Saudi Arabia's interior minister warned female activists Thursday not to defy a ban on women drivers at a planned protest on Saturday.

"It is known that women in Saudi are banned from driving and laws will be applied against violators and those who demonstrate in support" of this cause, interior ministry spokesman General Mansur al-Turki told AFP news agency.

His remarks came one day after the ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency that Saudi laws "prohibit activities disturbing the public peace and opening venues to sedition which only serve the senseless, the ill-intentioned, intruders, and opportunity hunters."

                            

The Riyadh Bureau blog noted that that statement was vague enough so as to appear to bolster the position of both sides of the issue, by warning against public disturbances. Thursday's remarks by al-Turki, however, made it clear that the government would not tolerate any defiance of the ban.

The blog also noted that in the original Arabic text of the statement, the Interior Ministry refers to "congregations and marches under the pretext of an alleged day of female driving." The English translation published by the Saudi Press Agency says "congregations and marches against an alleged day of female driving."

Technically, it is not against the law for women to drive, however Saudi Arabia does not issue licenses to women.

The rolling challenge Saturday is being promoted with an online petition on the website Oct26Driving.

Activists have also stepped up the pressure by posting videos showing women driving around Riyadh and other cities in violation of the ban.

The blog Saudi Woman, written by activist and freelance writer Eman Al Nafjan, has been particularly outspoken. Her essay for Amensty International's LiveWire Thursday argued that "'society' is no longer an excuse" for the ban. An excerpt:

If there was one word to describe what it is like to be a Saudi woman, it would be the word patronizing. No matter how long you live, you remain a minor in the eyes of the government.

In Saudi Arabia we take patriarchy to the extreme. The fact that the culture, like many others around the world, is male-dominated is not the major challenge. The real challenge is that the government has allowed this patriarchy to dictate how it deals with citizens.

Two weeks ago, three female members of Saudi Arabia's Shoura Council introduced a recommendation to the body to lift the ban.

On the other side, more than 100 conservative Saudi clerics gathered this week at the Royal Court in Riyadh to protest what they called "the conspiracy of women driving," the Riyadh Bureau reports.

There have been a few major challenges to the ban in past three decades. In 1990, police cracked down on 47 female drivers, firing many of the protesters from government jobs and barring them from traveling outside the country. In 2011 a Saudi woman was sentenced to 10 lashes for driving, the Riyadh Bureau notes.

A larger protest by more than 50 women that same year, at the height of the Arab Spring, was largely ignored by police