For some Saudi women facing strict male authority and even abuse, there's only one answer: Run

When a Saudi woman living at home with her parents and siblings asked her brother to fix something in her room a few months ago, he asked what color underwear she was wearing.

She found the comment chilling.

Her father had already tried to grope her. When she hid in her room, installing a lock and stockpiling food, he made lewd phone calls from elsewhere in the house while he masturbated, she said. Upset, she fled to furnished apartments for days at a time, but always returned when her father — who is her guardian under Saudi law — phoned.

“He would threaten, ‘I’m going to file a case against you that you ran away. I’m not going to let you work,’” said Hala, 30, who works in healthcare. As she spoke at a women’s coffee shop recently, she glanced around nervously, covering her face with a black veil when strangers approached. She asked to be identified only by her first name out of fear over the consequences of being publicly identified.

In Saudi Arabia, fleeing even an abusive home is a crime for women. Their male relatives wield vast power under the kingdom’s guardianship system, which prohibits women from running away from male guardians, including fathers and husbands, and gives those relatives control over their ability to obtain passports and travel. If runaways are caught, they can be jailed until their guardian allows them to be released.

Guardianship can be particularly onerous for women who are divorced, widowed or who delay marriage. Some mothers are forced to defer to their sons as guardians.

But Saudi women are increasingly risking imprisonment to flee, not just within the country, but overseas as well. They are coordinating those efforts with a network of supporters via social media, sometimes arranging marriages, vacations and study-abroad programs as a cover.

A list of proposals for reforming the guardianship system was submitted this spring to King Salman, who signaled after he took the throne in 2015 that he was open to lifting some of the most oppressive restrictions on women.

The proposals call for ending the requirement that women have a male relative’s permission to travel or do many other things considered routine for women in other parts of the world. More than 14,000 people have petitioned the government to overturn a ban on women driving.

Already, the king has issued a decree ordering government agencies not to deny women services simply because they do not have a male guardian’s consent, unless existing regulations require it.

The king’s interest in the topic has given some women hope for greater freedom.

“It might not be in my lifetime,” Aisha Manie, a businesswoman and rights activist who drew up recommendations to the king on relaxing guardianship, “but it’s coming.”

In the meantime, some women say they have no recourse but to run.

More than 1,750 women fled their homes in 2015, the latest year of figures released by the Saudi Ministry of Labor and Social Development and many were domestic violence victims. The ranks of such women are growing, according to Mansour Askar, a sociologist at Imam Muhammad ibn Saud University in Riyadh.

Activists who aid runaway women said one reason more are able to flee is because they have access to help through social media.

“Many women reach out to me every day. The number is increasing,” said Taleb Abdulmohsen, a Saudi activist who spoke by phone from Magdeburg, Germany, where he coordinates escapes on Twitter. “They ask me to help them. Most of them don’t have travel permission from their guardian.”

He knows women who have fled to Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States.

Two months ago, Shuruq Hussain Almughamisi told her family she was going to Canada with her Algerian husband on vacation. She had endured years of abuse by her father, she said; he used to hit her with whatever came to hand: a broom, garden hose, shoes. Instead of going to Canada, however, the couple deleted her social media accounts and fled to Europe, where she issued a video denouncing Islam for “inciting hatred, violence [and] oppression” against women.

Almughamisi won’t say precisely where they moved for fear her family might find out.

“If they knew,” said Almughamisi, 30, via Skype video, “they might kill me.”

Norah Dulaym Mohamed, 22, fled the kingdom last month while her father, who is her guardian, was away. He had granted her a permit to travel the year before, she said. After she arrived in Germany, she called her mother.

“I told her I was going to start a new life here and I wasn’t coming back,” Mohamed recalled. “She was very upset and cried a lot and told me to come back.”

Mohamed instead applied for asylum.

Several Saudi women have been caught fleeing this year, forcibly returned and jailed, igniting viral international online campaigns to free them.

Dina Ali Lasloom, 24, an English teacher from Riyadh, recorded a video statement after she was stopped at the Manila airport while in transit to Australia on April 10.

According to Human Rights Watch, another woman who was traveling through the airport that day said Lasloom asked her for help because airport officials had confiscated her passport and boarding pass and detained her for 13 hours — something Philippine immigration officials deny.

That woman, Meagan Khan, helped Lasloom record several cellphone videos that were later posted online, including one in which Lasloom said, “If my family comes, they will kill me. If I go back to Saudi Arabia, I will be dead. Please help me.”

Khan said that before she got onto her own flight, she saw two men arrive; Lasloom said they were her uncles. Human Rights Watch said it interviewed an unidentified airline security official who saw two of his colleagues and three Middle Eastern men carry a struggling Lasloom — bound with duct tape on her mouth, feet and hands — to a wheelchair and whisk her away.

Witnesses recounted on Facebook seeing a screaming Lasloom forced by her uncles onto a Saudi Arabia Airlines flight to Riyadh. A woman who tried to meet her at the airport was temporarily detained. It’s not clear where Lasloom was taken. Supporters launched #SaveDinaAli, a Twitter campaign to raise awareness and urge a royal pardon.

The same month, Maryam Otaibi, 29, was arrested after she fled an abusive home north of Riyadh to the capital, where she found work at a recruitment agency and rented an apartment until her family found her and had her jailed. Supporters are still trying to free her, tweeting #justiceforMaryam.

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