By Badea Abu Al-Naja
The National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) is currently helping a non-Saudi woman to get her rights from her Saudi husband who abused her and threw her out of their home despite a court ordering him to look after her.
The NSHR has accompanied the woman to the General Court in Makkah and helped her secure accommodation at a women’s shelter run by the Ministry of Social Affairs that had earlier refused to provide her with shelter saying she needs to get her husband’s consent.
“My husband violated a reconciliation agreement he signed before a judge at the General Court and drove me out of the country through deception,” the 50-year-old Arab woman, whose name and nationality have not been disclosed, told Arab News.
The woman said she married the man and then came to the Kingdom several years ago. It was only after numerous years of abuse that she sought legal assistance.
“He ill-treated and starved me besides denying other basic necessities of life. Then he threw me out of our house. I had to go begging in the streets for my food and spent my nights in the Grand Mosque. However, a Saudi widow felt pity for me and invited me to live with her. She also helped me seek legal help,” she said.
Subsequently, the court issued a reconciliation verdict in her favor and her husband promised to abide by it in 2009, she said.
“After a few months he took me back. I expressed my wish to visit my aged parents in my country. In fact, we used to visit them annually in the early years of our married life. But this time my husband took my journey as an opportunity to get rid of me. He got my passport stamped with a final exit visa, which I only learned when I was about to return after one month in my home country,” she said.
She said she found it impossible to return to the Kingdom because of the exit visa. “I had to struggle for 18 months to get a visit visa from the Saudi Embassy. That was also only a 30-day visit visa. To make things worse, when I arrived in Makkah, my husband did not allow me to enter our house,” she said.
Again she had to live in the streets. However, some people took her to the NSHR, which sent her to the women’s shelter. But the shelter authorities refused to take her saying she could not be admitted without the consent of her husband, she said.
The NSHR again came to her rescue and brought the issue to the court’s attention. The court looked into the history of her case and noted that the husband was violating his own undertaking two years ago that he would not mistreat his wife. It ordered the concerned departments to see that the man takes back the woman without delay. (end of article)
