Hidaya Sultan al Salem

Personal

Hidaya Sultan al-Salem was born in Shuwaikh, Kuwait, to the ruling family. As a child, she attended the private Koranic girls' school of Mutawia Saleema and the Mutawia Mariam Al Askar until 1946. Her education came to an end when she was married at the age of fifteen. At the time of her death, she was a widow and a mother of four sons and one daughter.

Career

Hidaya Sultan al-Salem was a journalist and author, editor and publisher for 40 years. However, she began her career as a teacher. She was the sixth woman to ever become a teacher in Kuwait. While she was a teacher, she started writing articles for Lebanese and Egyptian newspapers.

In 1961, she became a journalist in Kuwait. In 1964, she was a founding member of the Kuwaiti Literary League. She published five non-fiction books while working as a journalist. Two of the books were The Arabs (1965) and Women in Koran. In 1970, al-Salem bought the weekly magazine al-Majalis and became its publisher and editor-in-chief. She was also the owner of Arab Sport. In 1972, she became part of a second wave of Kuwaiti women writers when she published a short story "Kharif bila matar" (Translated: "An Autumn Without Rain"). In addition, she published an underground newsletter Children And Women of Kuwait during the occupation of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990-1991.

She was also a member of the Kuwaiti Journalists Association and served on its board as a prominent women.

Death

Hidaya Sultan al-Salem was aware that someone was after her. In the latest issue of her magazine, Al-Majalis she had stated that the police were not acting on her complains about her employees embezzling money from her magazine and sabotaged her printing equipment. This was considered to be a public letter to the Emir Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah.

She was shot and killed in Kuwait City on 20 March 2001 while she was being driven to a Women and Culture Conference that was being hosted by the Kuwaiti Women's Association. The conference was being held to declare Kuwait City as the "capital of Arab culture" for a year. On the way, al-Salem was stopped at a traffic stop when Lieutenant Colonel Khaled Diab al-Azmi (also transliterated as Ziab Khaled Al-Azmi) got out of his four-wheel drive vehicle and shot six bullets into al-Salem's head with a government-issued gun while she was in her Rolls Royce. The Lt. Colonel was a high ranking police officer, and he was wearing a long traditional robe at the time of the shooting. al-Salem died in the hospital shortly after.

Investigation

Originally four people were investigated for the murder of Hidaya. Many motives for the murder were reviewed. In the beginning of the investigation, some believed the murder was political. Hidaya had written an article about money being embezzled, and the office in the Gulf Emirate not being used appropriately. Her lawyer believed it was too early to assume Hidaya was killed for political reasons. Another motive included financial problems and disputes with her employees. The investigation led to the actual motive for the crime. A year before the murder al-Salem had published an article, the article had criticized his Al-Awazem (Al-Avazem) tribe. In the article al-Salem had published her thoughts about women dancers in the tribe. The dancers were women that al-Salem's family had hired. The article described the women dancers as 'all temptation and sexual suggestion'. Many members of the tribe took offence to this, due to the fact that al-Salem had talked about the tribe living outside the Kuwait walls. The members of the tribe believed al-Salem was implying that they were not real Kuwaiti people. Later, al-Salem explained that she did not mean that. The Lt. Colonel was thought to have killed al-Salem to protect the honor of his tribe.

At first, the Lt. Colonel claimed innocence but later admitted that he was infuriated by the criticism of his tribe in her magazine. Later, the Lt. Colonel recanted his confession and suggested the police had forced the confession. In February 2002, Lt. Colonel Khaled al-Azmi was convicted by a criminal court for the murder of Hidaya Sultan al-Salem and sentenced to death by hanging, which was upheld on appeal. However, the sentence was later commuted to life by Kuwait's court of cassation.

Context

Even though the Constitution of Kuwait guaranteed women equality in 1961, women were not granted rights until 1999, which was opposed by the reactionary tribal-fundamentalist alliance.

Hidaya Sultan al-Salem was a campaigner for women's rights and suffrage in Kuwait, as well as a female leader in publishing. Women media professionals surveyed by the Beirut-based Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World concurred that important editorial decisions in all media were still invariably made by men. While women were occupying more spots in journalism training programs, they were employed at the same level.

She also played a role in the emergence of women in the literary scene in Kuwait in an era when magazine publishing was a new development.

Impact

While Hidaya Sultan al-Salem was the first journalist killed in Kuwait, she was one of 51 journalists killed while on the job in 2001. The rate of professionals in the media being attacked and killed increased during the year of 2001.

Reactions

Hidaya Sultan al-Salem wrote articles primarily about corruption in Kuwait. Kuwait News Agency reported 80 percent of her more recent articles before her murder was about corruption.

The fundamentalist tribe alliance banned the publication of books written by two of her peers Aalia Shuaib and Laila al-Uthman.

The journalist's family appreciated the verdict. Her son Al-Othman told Associated Press, "This crime was foreign to our city. In Kuwait, there is no room for the law of the jungle."