A report released by a member of the United Kingdom’s House of Lords has called on the world’s leading economies to shun the G20 summit hosted by Saudi Arabia this year unless jailed women’s rights activists are released.
“I want all of us to call upon those who will be participating in the G20 meeting to say we will only participate in this meeting being hosted by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia if you release these women,” Baroness Helena Kennedy, a prominent Scottish barrister, said in a video statement released on Wednesday.
“These women are being detained because they are advocating for women’s rights and it is seen as an affront to the power structures of Saudi Arabia,” Kennedy added.
The United States, India and the UK are among countries that will attend this year’s G20 summit starting on November 21, hosted by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, set to take place virtually amid the coronavirus pandemic.
One of the themes of the G20 summit is women’s empowerment.
According to Kennedy’s report, the charges laid out against the jailed women include “inviting and inciting people to change the political system in the kingdom; initiating a campaign on Twitter to request a new constitution and speaking to British journalists for a documentary about imprisonment in the kingdom”.
“None of these would amount to crimes in any decent nation, and that is the problem,” Kennedy said. “This is an unacceptable abuse of human beings.”
