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Saudi Arabia Implements Electronic Tracking System For Women

dsinc writes "Denied the right to travel without consent from their male guardians and banned from driving, women in Saudi Arabia are now monitored by an electronic system that tracks any cross-border movements. Since last week, Saudi women's male guardians began receiving text messages on their phones informing them when women under their custody leave the country, even if they are travelling together. 'The authorities are using technology to monitor women,' said columnist Badriya al-Bishr, who criticised the 'state of slavery under which women are held' in the ultra-conservative kingdom. Women are not allowed to leave the kingdom without permission from their male guardian, who must give his consent by signing what is known as the 'yellow sheet' at the airport or border."

38 of 591 comments (clear)

  1. Apartheid by Richard_J_N · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When South Africa did this (to black people, rather than women), under Apartheid, the civilised world rightly condemned it, and imposed trade sanctions.
    Where are the trade embargoes on Saudi Arabia? They're in contravention of the UN declaration of Human Rights.

    1. Re:Apartheid by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Won't happen, and remember this is in accordance with sharia law too. Which is supposed to elevate women above western standards, or so flappy headed groups keep telling us.

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    2. Re:Apartheid by tsa · · Score: 4, Funny

      I guess we will buy more oil from them in the future. That'll teach them a lesson!

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      -- Cheers!

    3. Re:Apartheid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Won't happen, and remember this is in accordance with sharia law too. Which is supposed to elevate women above western standards, or so flappy headed groups keep telling us.

      Sure, just like Islam is the "religion of peace" even though, of the 120 or so active shooting wars happening today, Muslims are involved in over 100 of them.

      At least during the Crusades and the Inquisition, nobody went around talking about how the Catholic Church was the "institution of peace". It's like the farther back in time you go, the more sense the average person had.

    4. Re:Apartheid by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, but we need their oil. Oil is more important that women's rights, obviously.

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    5. Re:Apartheid by OzPeter · · Score: 5, Insightful

      To leave China, you need an exit visa. This is also in contravention of UN declaration of human rights. Would you expect a trade embargo against the Chinese too?

      Its even worse in Saudi Arabia .. according to the great and powerful wikepedia Exit Visas are required by foreign workers in Saudi Arabia and Qatar

      .. Hence at the end of a foreign worker's employment period, the worker must secure clearance from his/her employer stating that the worker has satisfactorily fulfilled the terms of his/her employment contract or that the worker's services are no longer needed ..

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    6. Re:Apartheid by ilguido · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The sanctions against South Africa had positive effects like devaluing the rand 17 times and so making diamonds much cheaper. Sanctions against Saudi Arabia on the other hand could rise the oil price.

    7. Re:Apartheid by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      this is in accordance with sharia law too. Which is supposed to elevate women above western standards, or so flappy headed groups keep telling us.

      It is suppossed to. The problem is that men are in charge of the implementation and that's a common problem across the entire world. Regardless of the laws on the books, if the people interpreting them are not representative of the people they are applied to, the end result is going to be biased like health insurance paying for viagra but not birth control pills.

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    8. Re:Apartheid by causality · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sorry but ALL religion is insidious and evil. It is a means of control for the unintelligent and mentally lazy.

      With organized religion there is some truth to that.

      When an individual is seeking a way to express the more abstract parts of his or her nature, what is called spirituality, and finds that some of the best real teachers had one "persuasion" or another but tend to all say very similar things, as though they all saw the same things and put them in different terms according to different frameworks ... there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Ignoring the progress made by those who came before means you are doomed to constantly reinvent the wheel.

      The trick any real individual understands is to not get caught up with any particular language or framework, to instead focus on what truly advanced people have seen or done. It's the difference between looking at the finger that points, versus seeing the heavenly constellation it tries to point out.

      Obviously individuals who really grok this tend not to herd together in large congregations with bylaws and conventions and someone to take the meeting minutes. For the most part, that is for the insecure who need to be surrounded by the like-minded to feel validated. Thus anyone who seriously questions or objects is a sort of threat. I for one say fuck that.

      --
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    9. Re:Apartheid by iluvcapra · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You make it too complicated. The international boycotts against South Africa were justified because they were effective. An embargo against Saudi Arabia would be ineffective, even if it were possible.

      In short, South Africa was a small country that could be pushed around; Saudi Arabia makes too much oil for that to be possible. Any such demonstrations would be pointless and would cause more harm than the original insult.

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    10. Re:Apartheid by mjwx · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Won't happen, and remember this is in accordance with sharia law too. Which is supposed to elevate women above western standards, or so flappy headed groups keep telling us.

      The only idiot who has said Sharia law will elevate women above western standards is you.

      The reason this wont be condemned like Apartheid in South Africa is that Saudi Arabia has oil and South Africa didn't.

      --
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    11. Re:Apartheid by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I would more classify it as the central component of religion—into which mythology and theology and laws can be plugged to create a full structured belief system—rather than a 'version' of it. It's the sense that there must be something greater out there, a result of human curiosity and imaginativeness untempered by the agnosticism of science.

      (In computing, we call this a security vulnerability.)

      That being said, spirituality doesn't make you go out and start wars or subjugate others. That takes someone with ambition. Ideally with a beard, narcissism, and/or early signs of schizophrenia (read: a Messiah complex or pathological liar claiming to have a Messiah complex.) In the absence of such god-kings, religions with destructive practices tend to limit themselves to the occasional virgin sacrifice. No one had to invent a religious motive to attack Carthage.

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    12. Re:Apartheid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I hate to break it to you, but the Christians during the Crusades were the technologically and culturally inferior group. Islamic philosophers were debating Aristotle and inventing things like chemistry, algebra, and hospitals. Christians didn't even know about the Greek philosophers, and when they found out it was because they translated them from Arabic. At which point the religious leaders denounced them and forbid the teaching of them.

      The Muslim world obviously went to shit, but don't pretend that the Christian world wasn't composed of mindless fanatics at many points in history. If the Crusades never happened causing the Muslim world to draw in on itself and become paranoid, the Renaissance probably would have occurred in Baghdad.

    13. Re:Apartheid by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because it goes against Political Correctness.

      I think it's fair to say that this specific situation has bugger all to to with "political correctness" in the sense you mean it.
      It's about oil, "stability in the middle east" (ie oil), an "ally to the west" (ie oil).

      It is not "political correctness". It is diplomacy in the worst sense of the word. The sense that allows countries to "smooth over" inconvenient realities and buddy up to the extent that dependency increases to the point becomes practically impossible to say "no". The "bleeding hearts" didn't get us here, the cold pragmatists did.

      Political expediency is the problem not political correctness. The solution? Frankly I don't see an easy one.

      --
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    14. Re:Apartheid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No it wasn't. If you haven't actually studied Islamic science I recommend you shut up now.

      Islamic science and religion were closely related. One of the reasons it was is because unlike Christian science, the natural world wasn't considered some separate entity from God. Muslims felt that studying the natural world was studying God's creation and thus giving them a better understanding of God. There are several hadiths that mention that searching for knowledge was a Muslim duty. Because of this, there was very little censorship of scientific ideas in Medieval Islam even when they contradicted dogma.

      The easiest way to describe the difference between Medieval Islam and Medieval Christianity is this: Christians were seeking to increase their faith despite what the natural world told them while Muslims were seeking to understand the natural world in order to better understand God.

    15. Re:Apartheid by Tagged_84 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, because a website like muslim.org isn't at all bias. Just look at their tagline: "presenting Islam as peaceful, tolerant, rational, inspiring"

    16. Re:Apartheid by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Religion is what allows civilization to not just progress through a social evolution, but to survive. Humanity needs religion as a whole, because our brains are wired that way.

      Meanwhile, back in reality, people are rightfully starting to worry about the combination of Atomic Age weaponry that modern science has given us and the and Bronze Age morality that the world's mainstream religions have saddled us with.

      Ever read the Bible? How about the Koran? Ever imagine going back in time and giving those guys nukes? How does your "civilization" look in that scenario?

    17. Re:Apartheid by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It is suppossed to. The problem is that men are in charge of the implementation and that's a common problem across the entire world. Regardless of the laws on the books, if the people interpreting them are not representative of the people they are applied to, the end result is going to be biased like health insurance paying for viagra but not birth control pills.

      Really? So I now have two people within a mere 40mins of each other, one saying it does. Another saying it doesn't. Odd. Oh, as for your idea that it does? I take it that you've read that good book, and the various legal documents surrounding sharia. Especially the parts where a women's testimony is worth less than a man's, where rape is the women's fault and so on.

      Don't be naive. It has nothing to do with "men who institute it." The entire system of sharia, is built around oppression, for the sake of oppression.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    18. Re:Apartheid by VendettaMF · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >> back then the average life expectancy was about 35. So if you didn't have kids young, you wouldn't be around to raise them for long.

      Slight side note there. The average life expectancy may have been 35, but remove all the infant deaths (those dying aged 0-2 years old) and the average bounces way up into the mid-60's, not so massively different to today's.

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    19. Re:Apartheid by ganjadude · · Score: 4, Insightful

      no, the problem is that saudis have oil,. if they didnt, MOST places around the world would not give a fuck about them, and as such they would disappear into the ages. But until their oil runs out, or we get off oil, we are stuck dealing with savages

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  2. We need to frack by Snotnose · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We need to get our fracking industry going full bore, convert all semi's to use it, and get to where we import 0% oil from anywhere. Let China and Russia keep the straights of Hormuz clear. Let the Saudies fall back into the decrepit 3rd world pit it deserves to be.
     

    1. Re:We need to frack by camperdave · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We need to get our fracking industry going full bore, convert all semi's to use it, and get to where we import 0% oil from anywhere. Let China and Russia keep the straights of Hormuz clear. Let the Saudies fall back into the decrepit 3rd world pit it deserves to be.

      No... We need to get our bio-diesel industry going full bore, convert all vehicles to use it, and get to where we import 0% oil from anywhere. Fracking is simply the equivalent to swirling the straw around the bottom of the cup, trying to suck up the last dribbles of milkshake. If you have to frack, the well is dry.

      --
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    2. Re:We need to frack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not really, it's just not conveniently located at all the right places.

      But give me 10 nuclear power plants and I can make all the fresh water you want.

    3. Re:We need to frack by Nostromo21 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We KNOW wind, solar, wave & geothermal work. We know a number of alternate bio-fuels work. We know natural gas works. We know hydrogen & electrical power sources work, the ultimate power source notwithstanding. We know nuclear fission reactors work, are relatively safe (I don't want to argue the point) & produce far less pollution & environmental damage per Gigawatt than fossil fuels. We know that nuclear fusion works, we just haven't invested seriously enough into it to make it practical, which we could have done 20-25 years ago. We know a number of other fuel sources & methods that could work, if adapted to varying degrees.

      However, we also know that oil works far, far more easily & cheaply than any of those right now & into the foreseeable future & is far more profitable, both in a monetary and geo-political sense. Not to mention the very deep pockets half the world's politicians & corporate heads have that touches on the oil industry in one way or another. It would perhaps be easier to get rid of electricity & copper wire as the main delivery method that powers all our devices, than oil as a primary fuel source right now. And that's saying something...

  3. 2 years old and not only women by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The "service" has been in operation since 2010 and it applies to all "dependents" which includes children, contracted laborers, etc. See: http://riyadhbureau.com/blog/2012/11/saudi-women-tracking. As offensive as the Saudi gov't policies are, getting half the story isn't going to help matters.

  4. Not True, Saudi Arabia didn't sign UN declaration by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Muslim countries didn't sign UN declaration of Human Rights because they perceived it as not compatible with Islam. Although these countries got own version of Human Rights declaration:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Rights_in_Islam

  5. you know, if this happened in the west... by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 4, Funny

    it could actually start a ...

    pussy riot!

    (what? WHAT?? someone had to say it!)

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  6. Re:Newsflash! by approachingZero+ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So there's this ugly realization that if you embrace the concept that all cultures are equal you must stand by and helplessly watch as little girls have their clitoris mutilated and homosexuals hung. It's like giving people democracy only to find out they want to elect people from the seventh century. Crap. Now what?

    --
    'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
  7. Fail. by VAElynx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm no feminist, but this is unjust and stupid
    It's also hilarious how the USA are all over supposed human rights in Russia and Belarus where people live with dignity, and overlook insane places like the Saudi Arabia is.

  8. This is merely the digitisation of the system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It may surprise people but.... Saudi has ALWAYS had this system of tracking women.

    As a child, when I left the country to visit my grandparents, accompanied by my mother, we had to be legally escorted to the airport and signed out by my dad, on re-entry we were re-checked into my dad's care.
    We were westerners living under the same rules as the locals. This was as far back as early 80s... the system has been in play forever. This is merely a modernisation of the system. I'm not saying I agree with the practice but, this is hardly headline news as its simply an upgrade to rules and methods for applying those rules that have been in play for a long long time.

    Why is it only now, when computers get involved that people are having issues with the basic concept? It was widely unknown it appears when the system was paperbased.

    Expat Brat.

  9. Re:Saudi Arabia by styrotech · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's great, but what do you think the ashfelt that you cycle on is made of?

    If I had to guess, I'd say ash and felt?

  10. Re:This will be reality in all countries... by Mashiki · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just ask France. France has entire districts run by Muslims that even the police are afraid to enter. In their own country.

    You're quite right, and is the list of them as they stand right now.

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    Om, nomnomnom...
  11. They're just one step from... by fyngyrz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...taking them to the vet and "chipping" them.

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  12. Re:to the men of Saudi Arabia by sageres · · Score: 5, Funny

    You are very courageous behind that keyboard, young master.
    Next time tell this to a Saudi man in a face.

  13. Re:Newsflash! by Xarvh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's retarded.
    You don't "give" people democracy.
    They have to take it for themselves.
    You can nudge, encourage, provide education, but ultimately "democracy from above" will never work, because it's a matter of culture and you can't have democracy if first you don't change the culture.

  14. Dear Muslim world: by circletimessquare · · Score: 4, Insightful

    as long as you treat half of your society like cattle, you are never going to have a happy, prosperous, or just culture.

    Yes, I know: "honor," "dignity." Well why don't you let your women take care of that for themselves on their own.

    The Chinese, the Indians, the Americans, the Europeans, they will advance. And you will fester. Because of your poor choices.

    Regards,
    the rest of the world

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  15. Re:Newsflash! by approachingZero+ · · Score: 5, Informative

    Perhaps you are mistaken? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_female_genital_mutilation_by_country Saudi-Arabia - Female genital mutilation is prevalent, but is declining

    --
    'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
  16. Re:Hmm ... by fyngyrz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And consider these interesting 9/11 facts:

    o 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabian
    o The superstition driving the group is rooted in Saudi Arabia
    o Osama bin Laden - Saudi Arabian
    o Osama's brother in law, Jamal Khalifa - Saudi Arabian - partially bankrolled the 9/11 group
    o Saudi Prince Naif, the interior minister, and Saudi Prince Sultan also partially bankrolled the 9/11 group
    o 28 pages of the 9/11 Joint Inquiry report dealing with Saudi Arabian connections have been censored

    So Bush attacked... Iraq.

    Go figure, eh?

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