BEIRUT (LEBANON) – Noted Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who is under detention in Saudi Arabia since 2018, started a new hunger strike on Monday over the conditions of her detention, said her family.
According to her sister Lina, the main demand is to be allowed to have regular contact with her family. In August Hathloul went on a 6-day hunger strike after authorities at Riyadh’s al-Hair prison prevented her from contacting anyone for more than four months.
The 31-year-old activist was arrested along with a dozen other women activists and since March she has been only permitted limited contact with her family. On Monday, her parents were allowed to meet her.
“Yesterday during the visit Loujain told (our parents) she is exhausted of being mistreated and deprived from hearing her family’s voices,” Lina al-Hathloul said. “She told them she will start a hunger strike starting yesterday evening until they allow her regular calls again.”
Her arrest has drawn global criticism and provoked anger in European countries as well as the US Congress after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, last year.
The kingdom freed some of the women’s rights activists who were held as part of a broader crackdown on dissent. Others remain in jail as closed-court hearings continue sporadically.
According to rights groups, three women, including Hathloul were in solitary confinement for months and had to undergo electric shocks, flogging and sexual assault.
Saudi officials have denied abusing the detainees and defended the incarceration saying they were held for harming national interests and supporting hostile elements abroad.
Hathloul has been accused of communicating with 15 to 20 foreign journalists in Saudi Arabia, attempting to apply for a UN job and attending digital privacy lessons, said her brother.