A Carleton law student is petitioning for the Canadian government to pressure the Saudi government to release activist Hatoon Al-Fassi.
Al-Fassi has been a women’s rights activist, and associate professor of women’s history at King Saud University in Riyadh. She is known for speaking out against the driving ban and was detained in June this year after publicly announcing her plans to celebrate its removal.
Katrina Douglas, now in her fourth year of law, said she believes this is wrong and is petitioning the Canadian government to pressure Saudi Arabia to release Al-Fassi.
She first learned about Al-Fassi in her law seminar with professor Melanie Adrian, titled “Academia And Activism”—and immediately took an interest in the case due to Al-Fassi’s promotion for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.
“She was one of the main women behind fighting the women’s driving ban in Saudi Arabia,” Douglas said, adding her detention violates Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—a treaty adopted and enacted by the United Nations nearly 40 years ago.
Douglas’ main focus in this project is on a petition calling for the release and full acquittal of Al-Fassi from Saudi Arabian custody.
Douglas and eight other students have since collaborated to fight for Al-Fassi’s release, as part of a project for their law seminar.
Adrian, the seminar instructor, is also the Canada chair for the Scholars at Risk (SAR) program—an international network of post-secondary institutions and individuals collaborating to protect scholars and academic freedom—and allowed Douglas and her partners to use the SAR’s resources in fighting for Al-Fassi’s release.
“Katrina is doing incredible work to help bring attention to what Ms. Al-Fassi is doing in Saudi Arabia,” Adrian said.
Douglas said she is excited about the possibilities of this project—especially since the program is in its first year.
“We get to do something that could potentially make a very big difference . . . we really do feel like we’re doing good work,” she said.
Simran Kaur, a first-year architecture student, said students who are not part of the project are also interested in the fight for Al-Fassi’s release.
“Every country has their own problems relating to women’s rights. In the Western world, we like to say that we’re equal, even though in reality we’re not,” Kaur said.
As of Nov. 21, the petition has 166 signatures and has also been sponsored by Liberal MP Gary Anandasangaree.
“Other group members and I have taken this very personally, and we hope to continue this kind of advocacy work outside of school,” Douglas said.
The petition is now available on the official House of Commons website, and will continue until Al-Fassi’s release.
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