Via Change.org, an urgent petition to stop the removal of Syrian women’s rights campaigner Raja Khouja, threatened for Thursday 25th June.
Friends of Raja and Mahmoud write:
Raja Khouja, a women’s rights campaigner from Syria, is detained at Yarl’s Wood and threatened with removal to Saudi Arabia on Thursday 25th June 2015.
Raja (aged 56) is a member of the Syrian Republican Party and was involved in human rights activism on the internet, focused on the wider Arab world. She has written many times about her views on the denial of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Mutawa (the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice) has denounced her and she has received email and phone call threats of death, imprisonment and mutilation including for ‘the opposite limbs to be cut off the body' were she ever to go to Saudi Arabia, the very country to which she is to be removed.
Raja is a Syrian national who has been living in Leeds, UK, with her Saudi husband Mahmoud Alhassan (aged 67) for four years. They were stranded in the UK by the emergency in Syria. They are much loved and respected by their community of friends here in Leeds and we are gravely concerned for Raja’s safety were she to be forcibly removed to Saudi Arabia.
Raja and Mahmoud’s application for asylum has not yet been fully considered. Despite this the Home Office plans to remove them imminently to Saudi Arabia on Qatar Airlines, where Raja will be in extreme danger.
Please show your support for Raja and Mahmoud by adding your name to this petition, and joining the campaign to stop the forced removal of our friends.
Please sign the petition at Change.org.
There will be a demonstration in Leeds on Monday:
URGENT: Stop the forced removal of Raja Khouja and Mahmoud Alhassan
Monday 12:30 at Waterside Court Immigration, 471 Kirkstall Road, Leeds LS4 2QB.
More details on the Facebook event page.