|
On March 11, 2002, a fire at a girls' school in Mecca, Saudi Arabia killed fifteen people, all young girls. The event was especially notable due to complaints that Saudi Arabia's "religious police" (aka the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice) stopped schoolgirls from leaving the burning building and hindered rescue workers because the girls were not wearing correct Islamic dress.〔( Saudi police 'stopped' fire rescue ). BBC News. 15 March, 2002〕 As Hanny Megally, Executive Director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch put it, "Women and girls may have died unnecessarily because of extreme interpretations of the Islamic dress code. State authorities with direct and indirect responsibility for this tragedy must be held accountable."〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Saudi Arabia: Religious Police Role in School Fire Criticized )〕 ==Fire== According to Saudi press reports the blaze at Mecca Intermediate School No. 31 started at about 8am. The blaze began in a room on the top floor, apparently caused by an unattended cigarette.〔(Shock turns to outrage over school fire tragedy ). Kingdom Arab News. 13 March 2002〕 As a result of the fire and ensuing rush to escape, 15 young girls died, and more than 50 were injured. Nine of the dead girls were Saudis; the rest were from Chad, Egypt, Guinea, Niger, and Nigeria.〔 The majority of the deaths occurred when a staircase collapsed as the girls fled the building. The residential property upon which the school was built, being overcrowded with 800 pupils, was unsuitable. In addition, the building may have lacked proper safety infrastructure and equipment, such as fire stairs and alarms.〔 According to at least two reports, members of the CPVPV, also known as ''Mutaween'', would not allow the girls to escape or to be saved from the fire because they were "not properly covered", and the mutaween did not want physical contact to take place between the girls and the civil defense forces for fear of sexual enticement, and variously that the girls were locked in by the police, or forced back into the building.〔〔 Civil Defense stated that the fire had extinguished itself before they arrived on the scene. CPVPV officers did appear to object to Civil Defense workers going into the building - Human Rights Watch quoted a Civil Defense officer as saying, "Whenever the girls got out through the main gate, these people forced them to return via another. Instead of extending a helping hand for the rescue work, they were using their hands to beat us." The CPVPV denied the charges of beating or locking the gates but the incident and the accounts of witnesses were reported in Saudi newspapers such as the ''Saudi Gazette'' and ''Al-Iqtisaddiyya''. The result was a very rare public criticism of the group.〔Abou el Fadl, Khaled, ''The Great Theft'', (2005), pp. 250-2〕 Also criticized was the General Presidency for Girls' Education (GPGE), which administers girl's schools in Saudi Arabia".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「2002 Mecca girls' school fire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|
