Saudi Arabian “freedom drivers” plan to take to the streets friday -- in their cars. It’s the official start of the Women2Drive campaign, in which some Saudi women intend to ignore threats of arrest and reactionary civilian violence and assert their right to drive in the only country in the world that bars women from getting behind the wheel of a vehicle -- bicycles included. The campaign marks the resurgence of a movement that began with a 1990 demonstration, followed by another protest in 2008. But the protests haven't succeeded in winning Saudi women permission to drive legally.
There are already reports of individual victories: One man tweeted at about 4 a.m. this morning Eastern time (11 a.m. in Saudi Arabia), "We just returned from supermarket, My Wife decided 2 start the day by driving to and from the store." Supporters are using the Twitter hashtag #Women2Drive to track the progress of women drivers throughout the day.
The campaign gained traction last month when 32-year-old engineer Manal al-Sharif was imprisoned for over a week after she defied the unwritten but heavily enforced ban by driving in Riyadh -- twice. Her trips were chronicled in videos posted to Youtube in which al-Sharif urged women to protest the ban on June 17, saying: "A woman has the same right as a man to live her daily life. In dignity." According to Amnesty International, she was released from prison on the condition that she would not partake in today’s protest drive -- local papers even portrayed her as apologetic. Following al-Sharif’s release from jail, Deputy Minister of Interior Prince Ahmad announced that it is officially illegal for women to drive in Saudi Arabia, although the ban is still not written into Saudi law.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/17/saudi-arabia-women-drive_n_878884.html
