Gulf Media Monitor Arab News --Keralamonitor.com

Saudi Arabia concerned about growing divorce rate

Socilogist predicts number of unmarried Saudi women to go up from 1.5 million to 4 million in 5 years.

Riyadh : July 8, 2002. The number of unmarried Saudi women will exceed four million by the year 2007, predicts Prof. Abdullah Al-Fuzan of the Riyadh-based King Saud University (KSU). According to the sociologist, there are 1.5 million unmarried Saudi women due to growing divorce rate among the Saudi couples, within three years of their pre-arranged marriage.According to his studies huge number of divorces take place in the Kingdom.

More than 18,000 marriages out of a total 60,000 solemnized in different parts of the Kingdom during 2001 have already ended in divorce, media reports say. According to study conducted by Al-Saif, the Islamic courts have been approving 25 to 35 divorce cases every day in the country. Most of the divorces occur in the first three years of marriage and a majority of divorced women had married under the age of 20.

According to S Mohammad Al-Saif, another Saudi sociologist polygamy is responsible for 55 percent of the divorces reported. A vast difference in age is also causing divorce. A total of 16,725 weddings out of 81,576 ended in divorce between March 2000 and March 2001 --20.5 percent of all marriages. Dr. Ebtisan Halawani of the Jeddah-based King Abdul Aziz University surveyed 158 Saudi divorcees. The main causes of breaking away for women from their husbands were ill-treatment, violence and hot temper", reported Arab News quoting the sociologist. The report said, some of them revealed to the researcher that their separation was the result of the non-committal attitudes of their husbands toward meeting family’s financial needs.

About 38 percent of the divorcees said that the involvement of their husbands in illicit relationships led to broken marriages. IIn one case a woman was locked up by her husband in a hotel room and he left the country, leading to their separation, Arab News report said. This sociological problem, attributed to the growing influence of individualism and lesser influence of religioun on family life. The UAE and some of the other Gulf countries too face the same problem of divorces.

Journalist body writes to Yemen President about illegal detention of two journalists

Washington : July 6, 2002. The Committee to Protect Journalists has written to the Yemeni President Ali Abdulla Saleh to protest the ongoing detention of free-lance journalists Ibrahim Hussein and Abdel Rahim Mohsen.'On June 21, plainclothes police officers arrested Hussein the office of the Yemeni Unionist Party, according to CPJ sources. Mohsen was arrested at his home on May 23. The two men have been held incommunicado since their arrests and were only allowed to meet with their lawyers on Monday, July 1, at the office of a state prosecutor in charge of handling press cases.

According to Jamal al-Jaabi, the journalists' lawyer, the two were charged on July 2, in a court in the capital, Sana'a, with "harming national unity" and "inciting racial, sectarian, or tribal discrimination," a violation of Article 103 of the Press Law, the CPJ said in an appeal submitted to the Yemeni President through the Yemeni Ambassador in Washington, Ambassador Abdul Wahab al-Hajjri. Embassy of the Republic of Yemen

However, al-Jaabi was not present at the hearing because he was never notified of the proceedings, he told CPJ. If convicted, the journalists each face up to one year in prison. The case is adjourned until July 7. 'The charges against the journalists stem from several newspaper articles they have written during the last several months. According to al-Jaabi, at the July 1 meeting, the prosecutor displayed files containing dozens of articles published in the weekly newspapers Al Osboa and Al-Thawri, including some that criticized alleged government corruption, human rights abuses, and restrictions on civil liberties.

As a nonpartisan organization of journalists dedicated to the defense of press freedom worldwide, CPJ believes that journalists should never be jailed for what they write. Over the years, Yemeni courts have continued to punish independent and opposition media by arresting and criminally prosecuting journalists under the country's Press Law and Penal Code.

"We respectfully call on Your Excellency to do everything within your power to ensure that Ibrahim Hussein and Abdel Rahim Mohsen are released immediately and that the charges against them are dropped. Furthermore, we urge you to work toward repealing statutes in the Press Law and the Penal Code that allow journalists to be criminally prosecuted and jailed. We thank you for your attention to these urgent matters and await your response," said Executive Director .(keralamonitor.com)