Thank you all so much for being here and thank you for still being here.
It has been a very intense, emotional day in which you've heard some incredible stories.
I'm very privileged to be here with Manal
because her's is an incredible personal story as you're going to hear.
She also has a lot to tell us about what is really happening inside Saudi Arabia.
It's fair to say that Manal al-Sharif is the last woman standing.
She is the last Saudi woman activist who can stand up
and speak out without fear of personal retribution.
That's not to say without sacrifice, because since Manal launched her campaign for women
to be allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia she has been arrested, she's been harassed, she's been persecuted.
She now lives in self-imposed exile and her family is split down the middle.
She has one son in Saudi Arabia, one son in Australia, the boys have never met.
It's quite a price to pay for a life that's characterized
by bravery and determination and Manal also exemplifies
one of the qualities that we're celebrating here today
at this extraordinary event and that is resilience.
And, like many of those who've joined
the Oslo Freedom Forum Community, and many of you here in the audience today
when she has the stage, she uses it to highlight the struggles of others.
So before we have our conversation there is something that Manal would like you to see.
The society is nothing if the woman are nothing.
The rain starts with a dot.
Manal, I saw you in Oslo in 2012
an extraordinary speech that was shared around the world.
If you were in Saudi Arabia today, would you be in prison?
Assalamu alaykum, peace be upon you. Thank you for being here so late
and I do believe that if I was in Saudi Arabia
at the time of these arrests happening, I would be one of them.
You had intended to go back? Yes.
You wanted to meet your son there and drive? Yes, yes.
So I was very hopeful with the new changes that's happening
in Saudi Arabia and a lot of people were questioning
me like why you're so hopeful, and I had a personal story about that.
So, when the conference came to the power and they announced
it was exactly the time my book was launched, Daring To Drive, and two months later
he announced lifting the ban. So I was very happy and I posted
I wrote a piece, Op-Ed for New York Times
and the Crown Prince Advisor, that means the Crown Prince himself
followed me on Twitter, private messaged me and he said
"Thank you for the piece in New York Times, how can we serve you? We're here for any service."
Right away, I sent him a message back and I say "I want Visa for my son, he never met his brother."
And he said, "I'll get back to you." He goes to the Crown Prince and the Crown Prince gives
his orders to grant my son a Visa. Finally, I had hope.
My first son is turning thirteen and my other son is four years old.
I was working in the papers, I was really hopeful with all the changes, especially with the religious police
the one behind arresting me and sending me to jail, they were put under a lot of restrictions.
The power had been decreased, one for them is the power to arrest.
So there were these very positive changes
that really gave me that false hope that things are changing.
And you wrote about that. You told the world that you were feeling positive
about the Crown Prince, the new power in Saudi Arabia.
Yes. Mohammad Bin Salman, MBS he's known as.
You wrote that come this June, Saudi women will be free
not only to drive their own cars but also to be the drivers of their own lives.
You genuinely felt big change was on the horizon for Saudi Arabia.
Yes, because if anyone seen the interviews
when Mohammad Bin Salman came to the U.S., the interviews were very encouraging.
A first time a leader talks this openly, so if you watch my speech in Oslo
I talked about the aftermath of the 1979 Seizure
of Mecca, and I mentioned that, the radicals came
to the power in the aftermath of the Seizure of Mecca.
And he mentioned that, it was amazing, it was like he watched my speech when he mentioned that
in the interview and he said, "We will not live in the aftermath of 1979, things are changing inside Arabia."
And I've seen them, I was in Mecca. Imagine in Mecca, it's the Holy City of Muslims
so why Saudi Arabia's important, just to go back, it's the birthplace of Islam.
So you have 1.6 billion Muslims look up to Saudi Arabia and look up to Saudi women.
So any changes is really not changes for Saudi women only, it's changes for the Muslim nation.
But what you have been campaigning for was change on a fundamental level.
It was about driving, it was about the guardianship system, it was about changing
the way society worked in Saudi Arabia.
Do you think you were fooled with the promise of change?
So, that's interesting because I can't say anything, unless I can talk about bravery all I want
unless I'm put in a battle to prove that bravery that I've been outspoken about, I can't prove it.
So, I was very cautious even when I wrote the piece
in the Time Magazine when they asked me to pen a piece about him and he was named one of the 100.
I believe he's not one of the 100 most powerful people in the world, I believe he's one
of the 10 most powerful people in the world today.
And that's how influential and powerful the monarch
in Saudi Arabia, he's the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, not his father, the King.
And let's talk about power because as we were discussing
what we wanted to say, we talked about the fact that
you're professionally au fait with information security, it's what you deal in.
Yes, I have a job, by the way, yes.
Yeah, that this is your profession. And you were saying, you know
when we look back to the days of, oh, Arab Spring hopes
of daring to drive, dreaming about driving, it was activists using social media and the Saudi State
you were telling me about the ways in which it has raised its game tremendously, especially in the last year.
Yes, so everyone noticed the Arab Spring, how it happened.
Social media is really made to connect people.
To connect to your old friends, but in the Arab world we used it to ignite revolutions.
We understood the game, we used it because we were living under very heavily censored societies
media that's controlled by the government.
And now we have this platform that we can use to speak up
to campaign, to call for action.
They didn't understand the power of that.
And Social media for them, it was like for kids, it's just...
They understood that power very well.
They didn't even play with the rules of the game, they actually cheated.
So they created all these trolls, very famous story here, the 200,000 tweets by trolls
by fake accounts, that'd been lead by the Kremlin Army
that lead to the, at the time of the presidential election, in 2016, it was deleted two years later.
This is how powerful when you understand the rule of the game, to just flip the table
and use the same tools that was used for liberation
you can use it to undermine and really jeopardize the democracy process in the world
And when you look at the activists who've just been arrested, some of your friends
your colleagues, your fellows, you were saying to me
it's not just about what you put up now, it's about what you've put up years ago
what you've put up and then deleted years ago...
Yes, yes. They're following you.
So, I said this morning that my stars are aligning
please go to the New York Times and read my piece about the dangers of digital activism today.
Any information you put online doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the company that you're using
their application or their website or their social media, it's out of your control.
Even if you put all these privacy settings that no one can see it but your own friends
or the people you choose, forget about that. Once it's out there in the internet, it's public.
And to understand that our Twitters, the government
the GCC governments, they started going to the archive
of our old tweets and they pulled that to build cases against us activists.
So we started, we used tools to delete our old tweets so they don't use it against us.
Guess what, Twitter decided, in February, decided to give you an API.
API, it's just like a service where you can ask to access the archive that goes all the way to 2006 of your tweets.
So if you deleted your account and delete your tweets
even if you delete your Facebook account, guess what?
Someone out there have the information that you posted on that account.
And that's happening now to Saudi women in jail?
Yes, let me just talk about these women.
So, these women, one of them, I just wanna talk about one of them, Loujain al-Hathloul.
Loujain al-Hathloul is a young girl and she's a social media influential.
She was driving from Dubai where she lived, and she's a personal friend of mine
she lived in my house, to Abu Dhabi, to her university.
She was kidnapped, she was put on private jet and flew to Riyadh, they flew her to Riyadh.
Her husband was in Amman in Jordan.
He was kidnapped, he was put in a commercial airline, the only passenger.
He was flown to Riyadh, and that was in March.
All these activists today are locked in prisons that no one knows where they are
they have one phone call with their family, there are no charges pressed against them
they have no access to lawyers, and the charges, there were no charges.
It was only treason, and treason is 20 years in jail.
And the only treason they had is they loved their country so much to campaign
for equal society between men and women.
And then what can you do for them? We're talking about this here today
but does it help if they've got connections to you or do they need you to be quiet
or to pull off a Facebook friendship, I doubt you use that anymore, but it's frustrating, isn't it?
Because can you speak out on their behalf or not?
It's disheartening, when I was in jail, they made sure that I signed so many pledges
I've forgot how many pledges I signed, my family too.
And they asked us not to speak up when they leave jail
not to talk about what happened, not to give any interviews.
So they shut you up and they make sure they use also your family to shut you up.
Those women today, their families blocked me. I call, no one answers me.
I'm trying to get information about them so I bring it up, I had their pictures on my Twitter account
I had someone, Aziza al-Yousef, who's a retired professor, 70 years old, a grandmother
she's in jail today for her activist.
They contacted me and I said I don't trust you, that you are her family.
And I ask about her children's names, give me her children's names
and he listed everything like all the way to the third, fourth, grandfather.
And I was shocked. The families are intimidated.
Loujain's husband, who's also a good friend of mine, he talks to a mutual friend.
He wasn't even able to talk to me.
He talked to a mutual friend asking me to delete the tweets I wrote about him and Loujain.
So this shows you how they are intimidated.
When I left jail, do you think I stopped talking? I didn't.
I made sure, I went, I filed a lawsuit against the traffic police and I wrote a whole book about it.
And I went and I gave up my job to give my Oslo speech, my Oslo Freedom Forum speech.
Government or dictatorship, so freedom of expression, why it's very important
is the foundation for any democracy.
You cannot build a democracy if you crack down
on the freedom of expression and you don't accept, it's just talk.
It's peaceful protest, it's digital protesting.
So, in terms of what you can do for those inside Saudi Arabia
who are trapped or who are out but feel they cannot talk
professionally, I mean, your message today in the New York Times, the Dangers of Digital Activism
professionally your message seems to be stay off social media, so what then?
Yes, social media, if you're an activist, don't use it to connect with your other activists
because you put yourself in danger, you put them in danger, just use it as everyone else are using it.
When you use it, you're really putting yourself on the line.
Do what Canada did - so if you didn't hear about what Canada did, Canada
they just posted a tweet condemning the arrests
Saudi Arabia, the same day they posted the tweet
they said this is a blatant, blatant, is that the word? Blatant, yeah. Blatant?
Interference in our internal policy and they literally, they kicked out
they expelled the Canadian Ambassador, they gave him 24 hours to leave the country.
And they cut the aid for around 10,000 Saudi students
and they called other 5,000 who are there for medical treatment and they stopped, they seized the airline.
So this is a very determined government.
They were giving the example, if you talk, if you criticize, this what's gonna happen to you.
And guess what? U.S., when they asked the U.S.
what do you think of what happened, what Saudi Arabia did to Canadians?
They didn't wanna even comment about it.
It's a picture of despair, really, isn't it?
So, I want to ask you, at the end of our conversation
and as this day draws to a close, some of the themes here are about forgiveness
about healing and about resilience and how can you stay resilient
and how can you advise others to stay resilient? What drives you on?
That's so beautiful, the forgiveness and healing, can I talk about these two?
In your life, there will be things, bad things happen to you, sometimes from the closest people in your life.
And I felt like I was betrayed by a whole country, when I just challenged the status quo.
I think the most challenging, the most courageous, the most rebellious thing I did in my life
wasn't driving a car or removing my hijab, or speaking against the status quo
was really forgiving those who did me wrong.
And forgiveness is very important because you do it for yourself first.
Because it weighs you down that hate, it weighs you down that anger.
And when you shed that, guess what? You really strip them away from their strongest weapon
is to intimidate you, to make you afraid, the fear of guilt and the fear of anger.
But about resilience
it's interesting story, that I met the Dalai Lama, we were speaking in the same panel
and we had breakfast that morning. And his interpreter told him who I was
and he looks at me, I was printing these papers of my friends who was in jail for disobedience
for leaving her abuser house, and I was gonna talk about her, I was so mad and angry
and I was gonna talk about, I Am My Own Guardian, and he looks at me and he says
"What you do is important for woman." He didn't say Saudi woman, he didn't say a woman
in your country, he said for woman. And that really shocked me, like, does he really know who I am?
Like why did he say that? Well, that was huge for me and that's the minute
I realized we're all connected, and that's a Buddhist concept
that when you hurt someone, you're doing that to yourself.
And when you fight for that right, when you speak up, you're speaking for those
who as Thor mentioned this morning, for those who are voiceless.
Who are most vulnerable in your societies and I think that what builds resilience.
Resilience means when you are down, you forgive, you get up and you continue.
For me, that is resilience.
And you do exemplify it and that's why we are so glad to have you here today, Manal al-Sharif.
Thank you. Thank you.