Activists in Saudi Arabia said on Thursday they are revving up a right-to-drive campaign using social media in the world’s only country that bans women from getting behind the wheel.
An online petition asking the Saudi government to “lift the ban on women driving” has attracted more than 2,400 signatures ahead of its culmination on October 26.
“The issue is not that of simply a vehicle driven by a woman, but the acknowledgement and recognition of the humanity of half of society and the God-given rights of women,” the petition states.
It adds the ban is a result of tradition and custom because there is “no single Islamic text” or judicial ruling prohibiting women from taking to the kingdom’s highways.
The petition website, www.oct26driving.com, includes short videos of women driving while clad in the head-to-toe black robes they are required to wear, with only their eyes exposed.
It features an “honour wall” naming 108 women whom it said have defied the kingdom’s driving ban.
Activists are also encouraging women to post pictures of themselves driving using a Twitter hashtag, #IWillDriveMyself, as well as on Instagram and YouTube.
“This year will be bigger,” one Tweet vowed, following a similar campaign last year.
“We are trying to do something to refresh this demand” that women be allowed to drive, one activist, Nasima al-Sada, told AFP.
“It doesn’t stop,” she said of the national campaign.“We are asking the ladies to sit behind the wheel and take action” on October 26 “or any day”, Sada said from the kingdom’s Eastern Province, home to most of the country’s oil reserves.
