Deprived of their basic needs, the four Saudi royal princesses kept in 13-year isolation by their father, King Abdullah, have surpassed 60 days without food.
The monarch’s daughters fell out of their father’s favor for
speaking out against the ill treatment of women in the Gulf
kingdom. It is also believed that the king was angry at the
girls' mother for not giving him a son.
Two of the princesses, Sahar and Jawaher, say they are being kept
against their will in two mansions inside a royal compound in the
city of Jeddah, along with their other two sisters – Maha and
Hala. They say they have been deprived of food for over 60 days
and have very little access to water.
“It’s a horrible situation, it’s a forced famine basically.
They are confining us, depriving us of food and water, freedom
and rights. We are struggling, we are surviving, we are
resisting, we are trying our best to stay alive,” the two
sisters told RT via Skype.
“How can we continue living like this? We have to take the
risk of [speaking out]."
Having spent so much time deprived of freedom, they struggle to
understand why they have been locked up.
“The king and his sons need to answer these questions: What
are we charged with? What exactly is our crime?”
“What is the crime of 99 percent of women in this country,
who are basically suffering under male guardianship? A male
guardian can do whatever he wants; he can cut off everything and
she is left with nothing,” they said on behalf of the female
citizens of the ultraconservative kingdom.
“We are making these statements right now [in order to] gain
our rights, our freedoms.”
Their health is slowly deteriorating. Past appeals by their mother, Alanoud Al-Fayez, for
outside assistance - including from Western leaders like US
President Barack Obama - have not come to fruition. The
administration is turning a blind eye, according to some critics.
But the situation cannot be helped by appealing to the Saudi
government either, as it maintains that the princesses are in
fact perfectly free to move around the city of Jeddah, provided
they are accompanied by bodyguards.
The four sisters are between the ages of 38 and 42, with at least
one said to be suffering from psychological problems.
Earlier, in rare interviews with foreign media, the sisters said
they don’t have any passports or IDs and the king has also
forbidden any man to seek his daughters’ hands in marriage. The
entire time they have been kept in isolation, both electricity
and water have been shut off at random, often for days – even
weeks.
The 89-year-old monarch and father of 38 children, given to him
by multiple wives, is listed among Forbes magazine's most wealthy
and influential men, with a fortune estimated at around US$17
billion.
The princesses' mother, Al-Fayez, divorced King Abdullah in 1980,
consequently leaving for London in 2001. The sisters' ordeal then
began around 2002. Less than one year after their mother escaped,
Abdullah began tormenting his daughters. The sisters told their
mother that he drugged their food and water to keep them docile
when they openly spoke against women being illegally detained and
placed in mental wards.
The director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, Ali Al-Ahmed,
believes the grave human rights situation in the kingdom is
compounded by a political strategy from the outside, whose
purpose is to keep any negative press at bay, and is a force to
either change things for the better or keep them as they are.
“This is the nature of the Saudi monarchy, who are oppressing
the people in their country. But now it’s very clear that they’re
oppressing their own female members. The king who is portrayed in
the international media – in the Western media - as a reformer,
is oppressing his own daughters; healthy adult women, who have
been held for 13 years…they’re being starved deliberately,”
Al-Ahmed told RT.
“People outside the country definitely can speak and hold
those people who are responsible for this crime accountable;
namely the Saudi king and his sons…who are deliberately doing
this.”