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'Of course we are scared': The women behind Saudi Arabia's anonymous feminist radio station

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Saudi women attend a hackathon in Jeddah on July 31, 2018
Saudi women attend a hackathon in Jeddah on July 31, 2018.()

No identifying photos, no voice interviews. "We can't call you, but we can accept your question, we will answer by email," a woman, 'Lora', replies from the Nsawya FM twitter account.

She sends a photo of a laptop and microphone she uses to broadcast the internet radio station.

I can't show my face," she says. "It's dangerous to me.

A photo sent by Nsawya FM
A photo sent by Nsawya FM.()
A photo sent by Nsawya FM
A photo sent by Nsawya FM.()

She says 11 women work on Nsawya FM, meaning Feminist FM in English, broadcasting programs through the live audio streaming website Mixlr.

"No we don't have a studio, yes we broadcast from home."

It operates from a small room in an unknown country. All the women are anonymous, and some live in Saudi Arabia. It has few listeners (200 on Mixlr and 2,232 on Soundcloud) but its first tweet declared that it hoped to become "the voice of the silent majority".

In the last three weeks, the station has broadcast three one-hour programs on the situation of women in the Gulf Kingdom, including stories of domestic violence.

Although it is very new and very small, it appears to have been noticed by authorities. It claims the Saudi Government has blocked its link within Saudi Arabia.

In recent months, the Saudi Government has been cracking down on the women's rights movement. It has arrested or detained at least 17 human rights defenders and women's rights activists since May, the month it announced it would lift the ban on female drivers.

That news was seen as an encouraging sign, but by the time the driving ban was lifted on June 24, many of the activists who had campaigned for the change were in jail.

'They blocked our link inside Saudi Arabia'

Last week, after Hack had emailed interview questions, Nsawya FM tweeted that its Mixlr audio stream was no longer working in Saudi Arabia.

A woman using the pseydonym Ashtar, who answered the interview questions, told Hack:

"We believe we did not do anything wrong, but of course we are scared."

"They blocked our link inside Saudi Arabia which means no one there can listen to us through the link & after that they tried to close our account on Twitter."

Soon after it says the Mixlr link was blocked, Twitter temporarily suspended Nsawya FM's account, citing a violation of Twitter Rules.

The Twitter notification sent to Nsawya FM
The Twitter notification sent to Nsawya FM.()
A screenshot that appears to show the mixlr domain blocked inside Saudi Arabia
A screenshot that appears to show the mixlr domain blocked inside Saudi Arabia.()

Twitter told Hack it doesn't comment on individual accounts for privacy and safety reasons.

There is no evidence of a link between the Saudi Government blocking the audio stream and Twitter suspending the account.

The Twitter account is no longer suspended.

Whatever the reason for the account being temporarily suspended, it added to the sense of conspiracy and suspicion at Nsawya FM.

"Until this moment, they work with government," Ashtar said.

'We changed their voices for their safety'

In its first three episodes, Nsawya FM has told the story of a Saudi woman who wanted to marry a man with a different nationality, from Yemen, and was shot dead by her brother. Another story told of a woman, Hanan Shahri, who killed herself after her brother and uncle beat her and refused to allow her to marry her fiance. This story was widely reported in 2013.

Ashtar told Hack the station was focusing on stories of harassment of women.

"We asked our followers on Twitter if they would like to share with us their experience, emailing or [sending a] voice recording.

There were a lot of them. We changed their voices for their safety.

Asked what would happen if she or other members were caught, Ashtar listed the names of several prominent Saudi female activists who were arrested in May on the charge of attempting to destabilise the kingdom. They are all still being detained.

"They will be say you are traitor, they will destroy my life, kill me, like Loujain Hathloul, Aziza al-Yousef, Eman AlNafjan, the rest of the arrested people," Ashtar said.

An Amnesty International poster featuring Loujain al-Hathloul
An Amnesty International poster featuring Loujain al-Hathloul.()

She said the station was not just calling for women's rights in Saudi Arabia, but for "all the women in the Middle East".

"It is not just Saudi Arabia," she said.

"To our knowledge Saudi Arabia is the worst for women.

"We have a dream that all women in the Middle East have their own freedom & we need to change the law to be a civilian law not Islamic anymore.

"So we can have justice."

On July 27, the station sent a tweet in Arabic that translates as: "Religion and feminism are intertwined. We are not a political party, or an opposition group and we do not seek confrontations. But this does not mean that we should not be critical or even avoid discussing politics."

Ashtar told Hack she and others had started the ratio station, "because we need to archive our activity, we need to say we are real."

"We have rights, we will fight to get our rights."

Posted 
Saudi Arabia, Feminism