Case of runaway sisters highlights ongoing plight of Saudi women
After their case made international headlines this month, one of the Saudi sisters who fled abroad spoke to Al-Monitor about the kingdom’s “flawed justice system” and called on the leadership to carry through with better reforms.
Earlier this month two sisters from Saudi Arabia’s southwestern Ranya province took an early plane out of Riyadh to Turkey. Two hours after reaching Istanbul, they took a second flight to Trabzone, and from there they hired a driver to take them to neighboring Georgia, where they could enter without a travel visa. They needed to move quickly before their family would be alerted through the controversial Absher phone app, which notifies male citizens when dependents check in at airports.
The sisters, now known as the "Georgia Sisters" on social media, are the latest Saudi nationals to have made such a public plea in a new wave of women leading a vote of no confidence with their feet against the reforms of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
