“It’s hell”: Saudi Arabia’s terrifying women’s reform schools
Officially presented as places of rehabilitation, the “Dar Al-Re'aya” actually resemble detention centers. Hundreds of young women are locked up there, whose only crime is to have defied the authority of a husband or father, or to have fled a violent home. Abuse is commonplace in these facilities, according to testimonies collected by the British daily “The Guardian.”
In the first photo [illustrating an article in the Saudi daily Al-Watan published in 2013], a young woman dressed in a black abaya is perched dangerously on a windowsill on the second floor of a house in a city in northwest Saudi Arabia. In a second shot, a group of men use a crane to lower her.
The identity of this woman remains a mystery. She is believed to be held in Saudi Arabia's renowned "prisons," where women are sent by their families or husbands for disobeying orders, engaging in extramarital affairs, or being absent from home.
These photographs offer a rare glimpse into the condition of the hundreds, if not thousands, of girls and young women believed to be detained in these centers, where they are “rehabilitated” in order to be returned to their families.
Speaking publicly or broadcasting images of these “homes,” or Dar Al-Re'aya [“care home” in Arabic], has become impossible in a country where women’s rights defenders have been silenced. Yet, over the past six months, the Guardian has gathered testimonies documenting the reality of these institutions described as “hellish,” where weekly floggings take place, where the entire population is held captive.
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