human rights defender
HRD's year of birth
1999
HRD's Gender
Woman
Type of HRD
- Journalist/Blogger
HRD's thematic area of engagement
- Civil and political rights
- Women's rights
HRD's bio and work
Asma Al-Subaie is an internet activist and a university student from Saudi Arabia. She used her Twitter account to defend prisoners of conscience and advocate for women's rights.
Current Status
Released
Detained since
Jun 1, 2021
Latitude: 23.035253431553244
Longitude: 44.47265625000001
Geolocation of detention
Country or area of detention
Region of detention
- Asia: Western Asia
Allegations / reports of ill-treatment
In prison, she faced numerous violations, including enforced disappearance, sexual harassment, and the Saudi regime forced her to appear on its official channels to polish its image. She was denied family or lawyer visits. Furthermore, the authorities refused to provide Asma’s family with any information regarding her detention conditions. Al-Subaie was detained without an official charge or a clear legal basis.
Recent case update / evolution
On 01 June 2021, a force affiliated with the Presidency of State Security raided the home of 22-year-old university student and human rights defender Asmaa Al-Subaie, confiscating her personal electronic devices and taking her to an unknown destination. Local reports confirmed that the reason for her arrest was that she posted tweets in which she expressed her views defending women’s rights and supporting women who are subjected to domestic violence, as well as defending detainees, calling for their trials to be public and criticising the harsh sentences issued against them because of their peaceful expression on the Internet. A group of her colleagues created a Twitter account in the name of friends of the detainee Asmaa, in which they called for her immediate release, using the hashtag: #Release_Asmaa.
She was released in April 2025.
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