Al-Riyadh

The story of the Saudi teenager Rahaf was the main subject in international media in the past few weeks. Rahaf claimed that she faced violence from her family when they were extremely angry with her when she cut her hair. She also claimed that her family did not give her the freedom to choose her university specialization or even to choose her future husband. Therefore, she escaped to Bangkok through Kuwait and finally was granted political asylum in Canada.

That should be the end of the story, but the strange thing is the way that international media has handled the story and the way they have projected Saudi society as one that is known for its violence against women. However, many may not know that Canadian women are victims of violence in their own society. This motivated Canadian film producer Shelley Saywell to produce a movie that talked about the violence and oppression that Canadian women face. Saywell said: “I spent three decades producing movies on conflicts and human rights, concentrating mainly on violence against women. I produced documentary movies on rape camps in Bosnia, also on victims of honor killing in Jordan and the West Bank.”

She continued: “I was thinking of Canada as a safe haven. This idea was erased from my mind when I realized that there are thousands of women in our country who are oppressed and our country is one of the main countries where violence is taking place. Our country for some women is a personal terror place. The number of women who are victims of domestic violence exceeds the number of victims of civil wars by nine times. In the past 10 years, the number of women who were killed in Canada by their husbands is greater than the number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan.”