by Eva Sohlman
– Sweden –
SANA’A, Yemen – For a Yemeni woman the most common route to a jail cell is love or prostitution. Another is to be raped. “The most common reason why a Yemeni woman is in prison is relationships with men,” says Najiba Naji, director of the state prison in Yemen’s capital Sana’a.
Women in Yemen – the homeland of the Queen of Sheba, according to legend – enjoy greater freedom than their sisters on the Arabian Peninsula, possibly the world’s most gender-conservative region. But this freedom does not count for much and the situation still leaves much to be desired, admits Ammat al-Aleem, Yemen’s Minister of Human Rights between 2003 and 2006. “There is no clear policy for women’s rights in Yemen. There is very little awareness of this.”
Yemen, known by the Romans as “Arabia Felix” (Happy Arabia) in the days when it flourished from the incense trade, is strategically placed at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula where the Red Sea meets the Indian Ocean. Today it is one of the world’s poorest countries, on the periphery of world politics, and more known by the epitaph, “The land of the three Ks – Kidnappings, Kalashnikovs and Khat”. Ironically, this marginalization has meant that the country has ended up at the center of world events once again.
Often referred to as “the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden” Yemen has become a hotbed for Islamist fundamentalists. It is one of the countries most profoundly affected by the wave of terror which began in the middle of the 1990s, and gathered momentum after the September 11 attacks. Yemen’s government lacks full control of its coastal and inland borders, making it a smuggler’s paradise. At the same time, a branch of conservative Islam has strengthened its grip on the population, half of which live on less than $2 a day. Even Yemenis themselves describe their living conditions as medieval. A strong tribal culture which runs like invisible lace throughout society further complicates matters. Discontented Bedouin tribes occasionally take hostages (in order to force the government to honor its promises to build schools and hospitals); they also offer protection to terrorists who harbor in Yemen’s remote and ragged mountains. The government is now under pressure from the international community to control the extremists and so collaborates closely with the United States in its global “war on terror.” However, human rights groups complain that Yemeni women as well as children under the age of 12 have been kept prisoner without being formally charged, victims of the campaign to reign in the militants.
But among the female prisoners in Sana’a state prison, there are no political prisoners. Of the 50-odd women incarcerated, a few have been convicted of violence or for illegally trading in alcohol. Dozens, however, are locked inside for committing a cultural crime in a conservative Islamic society. Sharia law, which rules in Yemen, condemns all extra-marital sex. Some say they are guilty merely of having unchaperoned contact with men, and have been turned in by their own parents to preserve family honor. “It is very sad. It is society that makes these women into criminals,” says prison director Najiba Naji.
A room in the spartan, crowded state jail grows dark as the ferocious Yemeni sun sets, and some 20 women prisoners file in. They range from about 16 to 40 years old, although many are uncertain of their exact age. A male guard is asked to leave so the women can speak with greater ease. The prisoners are willing to talk. Sometimes the remaining female guards shake their heads sceptically at a woman’s version of her story, and offer a rival account. It is difficult to verify the stories, but all prisoners get to have their say.
Marjam, 17, tells how she fell in love with Moustafa, a married man renting a room in her family’s house. Marjam’s parents turned down her plea to be allowed to marry Moustafa (a man may take up to four wives in Yemen). The couple were later caught together being intimate. Marjam says she had no choice but to say, falsely she admits, that he had raped her, to save her own and her family’s reputation. The family then rejected Moustafa’s proposal to marry Marjam and pressed charges; Moustafa was arrested for rape and Marjam for having had sex.
It is now impossible for Marjam’s family to accept the marriage proposal and take back their accusations of rape. That would suggest they approved of Marjam’s and Moustafa’s sexual relationship, an interpreter explains. Marjam’s family insisted she spend time in jail to “clear her reputation”. Tribal law and custom are primary influences in Yemen, and it isn’t clear whether there is any formal legal charge against her. It is also unclear whether Moustafa is still accused of rape.
But Marjam will be “free” soon. Her family has now found another man they want her to marry when she leaves jail, a man she does not know. “I have no choice,” she says, shrugging sadly. “I am still in love with Moustafa, but I will get married to the other man.”
The women speak in a matter-of-fact way, seemingly without shame or resentment, in front of an audience of five women guards, a female European journalist, a female interpreter and the female prison director Najiba Naji. “The typical case of a woman prisoner in Yemen is that she has committed a ‘love crime’,” said Najiba. “Women ‘interfere’ with men because they are in love. That’s why most of them are here.” It is an odd verb to use, perhaps the result of dubious translation. Najiba explains what she means by “interfering with men”. “It means the woman has been caught with a man on her own. This is a crime,” she says. “The charge is often that of “prostitution”.
There are also those in prison who have been raped and then rejected by their families, such as Noor, in Taizz in southwest Yemen. “It was very tragic. They say she was raped when she was 12 years old and got pregnant, but her father turned her into the police because of the shame [it brought upon the family]. They claimed she had prostituted herself,” says a European diplomat familiar with her case. He says Noor had been raped by some of her own male relatives and that the father had tried to save the family’s reputation by claiming she had prostituted herself. “She had no idea where to go if released. She was scared her male relatives would kill her to restore the family’s honor once she was out.”
So-called “honor killings” are not known to be as common in Yemen as in for example Pakistan and Jordan.
In some cases, the relationship between the man and woman involved is indeed one of prostitution, says Najiba. “It is largely the conservative environment which turns women into criminals,” she explains. Divorce is allowed in strongly Islamic Yemen, but it cannot be initiated by the wife unless so stipulated in prenuptial vows; very few women insist on this. Most divorced women struggle to support their children, and it is unusual for a man to want to marry a divorcée. So, without economic support, some women are driven by desperation into prostitution.
Najiba says a recurring pattern she sees is one in which a girl falls in love with a man whom the family will not accept, then elopes and gets pregnant with him. The family then turns them both in to the police; the couple can end up in prison if someone can testify that they have been intimate. The man often denies the relationship. Another common story among the convicted women is the result of arranged marriages – which are forced on girls as young as 12 years of age. Later, the girl may fall in love with another man and, if found out, she is then charged with adultery. “Women, or, I should say, girls, are often wed at a very young age, far too young,” says Najiba.
Ammat al-Aleem, says the government is aiming to change the official age for marriage from 15 to 18 years, but admits she thinks this will probably have limited impact in a country where tribal law dominates outside the cities. Human rights organizations say women still face discrimination in personal status law; there is little protection for them from underage, forced, and polygamous marriages. Only a male guardian can, for example, arrange a marriage for a woman.
Cell life
The corridor to the women’s cells in Sanaa runs in an L-shape around a courtyard, the complex surrounded by a high concrete wall. Washed underwear and diapers hang on the fence between the corridor and inner courtyard: children live with their mothers who are prisoners.
About ten women share a cell that measures roughly 16 square metres. They spend much of the day in their narrow metal bunks. There is no other furniture. The barren rooms are either lit by harsh fluorescent lights in the ceiling, or not at all. In one, women are trying to cook dinner in the dark; their only light comes from a small gasoline stove. “We let them cook their own food if they want to. They get food here, but can improve it with whatever they are given by friends and relatives,” explains a female guard.
The guards wear a blue trouser uniform and a headscarf. Some of the prisoners, however, go with their heads uncovered – among the few Muslim women in Yemen to do so. The heavy smell of the gasoline used for cooking hangs over the place, mixed with cigarette smoke.
As Najiba leads the way through the corridor, Bilquis, a Yemeni woman of about 40, approaches to explain in English why she has been put behind bars. She says she lived in the United States but returned to Yemen to raise her children, but was arrested by the police because of a dispute over a mobile phone. Najiba says Bilquis is not in prison just because of the dispute, but because she has been caught drinking and prostituting herself. “She is in and out of here like a yo-yo, it is sad to see. It is obviously hard for her to adjust to this culture.”
In the last cell the women say a baby boy was born in the prison that very same day. The mother is lying in one of the bunk beds with a blank expression on her face. The small bundle is held up for show and everybody is smiling and chatting until the interpreter jerks back with a cry, holding her hand over her mouth.
Once she is composed she explains: “The woman says the father of her baby is her father. They say she is in prison because she was raped by her own father!”
About the Author
Eva Sohlman is a Swedish journalist and writer with credentials in print, radio and TV. She is presently Editor and Producer of The World in Focus (“Världen i Fokus”), a Swedish TV program which reports world news and in-depth studio interviews. The show follows Eva’s international career reporting for Reuters and publications in The Economist, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Having lived, studied and worked in Sweden, Britain and France, Eva is fluent in each of those languages. Her book, Arabia Felix [Happy Arabia] in the Time of Terror – Journeys in Yemen (“Arabia Felix i Terrorns tid – Resor i Jemen” ) was published in Swedish in January 2007. It is based on her reporting for Reuters and the Economist. This article is taken from a chapter in that book. Three chapters translated into English by her Swedish publisher, Wahlström & Widstrand can be found here.
As you mentioned that Yemen is a very conservative Islamic society.So unlike Sweden where you have homosexual and support jay marriage,here in Yemen we do not have such thing.A man may take up to four wives in all the Islamic world not only in Yemen.So i think first of all you need to read more about Islam.Now days there are so many people getting converted to Islam specially in Europe.
Finally i just want to say this crimes are happening every where in the world and every day.May be the percentage in Sweden are much much more then Yemen.
It seems also this report have been taken long ago or the author have visited Yemen long ago not recently.
Answer to Ammar: Polygamy is banned in Turkey, Lebanon and Tunisia.
Thank you to the editors and to Eva for this article. This oppression of women is heartbreaking to me. I am, unfortunately, not surprised to learn that the Bush regime’s policies of international repression that go under the heading of “war” on terror are increasing the harm to women in Yemen. When human rights are not considered, the results are inevitable.
For what it is worth, at least some of us in the US are working to stop this regime and to promote respect for human rights. I wish I could say we are making big strides. We are at least not giving up.
It is nice and investigated article and I couldn’t challenge any of its information as I’m not much familiar with Yemen although it is not far from Bahrain, but I can have my say about Lebanon or Egypt and not Yemen as it is not an open society. I disagree with the writer that Yemen enjoys greater freedom than their sisters on the Arabian Peninsula as this is not true as other Gulf countries are enjoying more freedom and are empowered by their government. Other objection to the article is that the writer is from Sweden and we don’t know if she is living in Yemen or not. Readers might have their doubts as she is outsider. It is a sensitive issue so the article needed opposite opinion or the views of lawyers or human rights activists. Western criticizing Middle Easter Countries or Islam could attract hostilities, especially with the negative publicity about the religion and Arab in the US and other western media.
You are so astonished of such doings why?
You should not……go to Gitmo Bay? to see what is happened to the free men who fought Devils?…..It seemed as you are so astonished of what is happened to that Prostitute Here is Yemen not Sweden…We respect just who are respectful not **** *******.
I am proud as I descents to the ancestors of Usama Bin Laden And others……..
Two words have been omitted from this comment. Please substitute “homosexuals” and “women” in place of the omission. –Ed.
The situation in Jordan is not so different than that in Yemen. In Jordan, there are three penal code articles on the books that offer leniency to the perpetrators of “honor” killings. They are treated as misdemeanors, and the average sentence is six months.
Because there are no women’s shelters in Jordan that will accept people who are at-risk for “honor” killing, they are often taken into what is termed protective custody and placed in prison. Usually, they are held at Jweideh Correctional Centre outside Amman. The average stay is seven years; the longest is currently about 12 years. Meantime, the people who pose the danger to them walk free. Release can be had by having a male relative agree in writing to protect the at-risk person, but the obvious problem with this is that usually it is the male relatives that pose the risk in the first place. It isn’t unusual for a newly-released person to be killed within 48 hours.
Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
“Reclaiming Honor in Jordan”
The article itself is excellent and is left up to our own interpretation. The reporting I found neither offensive, prejudicial or otherwise written from a biased negative perspective. Nearly all readers, however, are biased one way or the other. To clarify Yemen’s and much of the Muslim world’s standpoint, it is, that democracy (“shura”) and law in general is derived from the articles of law present in the Koran not very much unlike Biblical law.
Polygamy for example is not accepted in the West but having multiple sexual partners is. Corruption is not in law itself but in the lawlessness or in the way the law is abused. For example cases of perjury is just as detested in Koranic law as it is Western law. Hence, the article relates facts of corruption and poverty. A good example in Koranic Articles of Law is that a person is not guilty of crime when one commits them out of necessity. The hungry can not be guilty for stealing food for example. Another article of law states that one is not guilty for doing something out of fear or by force.
Hence in rape cases only the rapist is guilty. In perjury cases the parent that lies under oath regarding their innocent child is guilty. In necessity cases one is innocent and only those that create that necessity are guilty. But fornication or adultery are crimes under the law just as polygamy is under western law. Excellent article and we need more like them as well as articles that educate the masses as to the basis of law for each nation.
It is really a great article and it is not offensive at all as some of the commenter thought so. The writer pointed the light into a real, sensitive issue that needs to be discussed and solved.
I just would like the writer to know that Yemen is almost the most conservative country in the Middle East and I would like also to let her know that what she mentioned in her article about rejecting the girls who were raped or had sex and put them in prisons, the situation is even worse than that. Some families kill their daughters to get rid of what they call it “shame” and burry the murdered girls in abandoned places. These crimes happen in countries where they believe that girls honor or reputation must not be touched or talked about. I do not only mean for girls who lost their virginity but also for girls who were accused of having sex just because they were busted with who they love.
Unfortunately Islam is just a word people keep using it whenever it matches their advantages and forget it whenever it does not match their desires.
Islam is just innocent of all these crimes and oppressions.
Nahed – Yemeni Girl
I live in a country that has 110,000 women in prison (US), so “50-odd” seems pretty minor. Also, opposition to polygamy is really opposition to women’s rights. If a woman chooses polygamy, isn’t it her CHOICE. To oppose this is to oppose her personal rights. The same goes for hijab. Countries like Turkey or France claim to support woman’s rights but actually restrict womens rights. In my city (Philadelphia) many of my friends have more than one wife, and many of the sisters are professionals. No one clubbed them over the head and forced then into polygamy. It is their choice. The “West” are such hypocrites. As a man, I can have sex with as many women as I like, but if I marry two, I’m a criminal. These people are such idiots. Oh BTW, I’m American born and raised.
TO ABU HANeef:
I WOULD agree with your statement that opposing polygamy is opposition to women’s rights if the Women in Yemen had the right to marry several men – If they wanted to. And divorce them when they wanted to. As they are forbidden to any of this, there is no logic to your agrument.
Please see the absurdity in the view that it would be a woman’s “choice” that her husband marries more women.
I think the article is important and lighting. In a very sensitive and examine way.
And reading the comments, it seems to be a problem lager than Yemen.
I do agree with some of the comments, that also in Europe – or Sweden – there still are not equality.
The basic problem, everywhere, is that the law must support equality, and there must be resources to make the law known and accepted by the population. There must be a benefit for those who give up there culture and that benefit must be known. Because you can never plead for independence and power from a part you find stronger, if there is no benefit. And there are! As only one example, Amartya Sen has been discussing the solution of poverty in India.
If women, generally, would been given the same opportunity as men, to get education, work, disposition of money and the right of marriage and divorce, it will solve the problem as it looks today.
And as a comment to Abu Haneef; If she married into polygamy by choice, witch is ok, she should stay by choice without fear.
I think it is a stretch to suggest that the oppression of women in Islamic societies is strongly impacted by the foreign policies of our current administration. This sort of thing was going on centuries before our President’s ancestors came to this continent.
Polygamy isn’t an issue with me if it’s consensual. However, sentencing victims of rape to severe punishment is simply unjustifiable. A diety who would demand such behavior be written into law is unworthy of his followers.
Well I guess if a writer would want to make a strong point on a women’s rights article, the best place to start would be inside of a women’s jail cell, as I can see Eva, you have done nothing less. You strongly describe or try to show how women in Yemen are victims of a crime not committed by themselves, and are nothing less than creatures brought here for our (men) own amusement and right to practice Polygamy. Well if that was the message you were trying to get out, it is completely absurd.
We have these laws so that prostitution is not practiced in Yemen. Unlike other countries, Yemen does not encourage prostitution for the pleasure of its country men, to attract tourism, and or for whenever the men have tired of the lady of the house, can just go to a certain street and pick up another lady, NO. We have Polygamy, and I would like to strongly express that not every man marries without his spouses consent or approval.
Ladies in Yemen are widely respected and are of course expected not to bring shame to their families, I think that is expected by every lady every where. It is because we respect them, we are a very conservative country that does not have a “Red Light District” such as Amsterdam, Holland. Where a man can go anytime of the day or night, with 50 euro’s in his pocket, and have his choice of lady that he sees fit for him to fornicate with. I definitely think, that is a very sad and dysfunctional way of life, and thank the lord that in Yemen, Polygamy is practiced instead of prostitution. In fact I think that its so sad that you haven’t went there(Amsterdam) to let them express their how their “women rights” has gotten them where they are now, and get their sobbing stories of how it feels like to be a prostitute.
As far as who to blame for the ladies held in jail (Yemen) for crimes they may or may not have committed? Well who knows, I certainly don’t. Its sad for the ones who are truly rape victims, but it’s sadder for our other Muslim sisters in Iraq, Bosnia, etc. who were raped, beaten, and impregnated not by their family relatives, but by US, British and Serbian soldiers. Now, I think that is something that would jerk a harsher cry into your interpreters.