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Rabat – Shocking videos have surfaced on the internet showing security forces beating a group of women at an orphanage in the city of Khamis Mushait, Saudi Arabia. The women were reportedly protesting for better living conditions.
The distressing videos show security officials holding down several women in black abayas, traditional attire for women in Saudi Arabia, while security forces in uniforms were beating and lashing them with leather belts and wooden sticks.
The video also showed security chasing women around the orphanage and violently shoving them to the ground, as well as a man dragging a woman by her hair across the orphanage garden as she screamed.
The governor of Saudi Arabia’s Aseer province, Turki bin Talal bin Abdulaziz, established on Wednesday a committee to investigate the incident and “refer the case to the competent authorities,” Middle East Eye reported.
The footage has spread rapidly on social media platforms. The hashtag #Khamiss_Mushait_Orphans in Arabic has garnered considerable attention among Saudi and Arab Twitter users, who showed solidarity and support for the girls and condemned the abuse they experienced.
“In addition to passing very long prison sentences for tweets, now Saudi security forces beat women in institutions belonging to the state- the brutality of the Saudi regime knows no limits,” tweeted Madawi Al-Rasheed, a British university professor of Saudi descent.
“This is how Saudi Arabia is empowering women- security forces terrorise orphans,” Al-Rasheed added.
Read also: Saudi Court Hands Women’s Right Activist ‘Longest’ Verdict for Tweets
Josh Cooper, Deputy Director at ALQST for Human Rights wrote on Twitter: “Extremely distressing footage of state violence against women in an orphanage in Saudi Arabia.” He added, “I wonder what it will take for those around the world who’ve taken the Saudi leadership’s ‘women’s empowerment’ rhetoric at face value to rethink?”
“Not all women are ‘empowered’ in Saudi Arabia! … Orphan girls are assaulted by security forces with tasers, batons, and shackles for demanding better living conditions,” tweeted former Saudi major-general Khalid Aljabri.
Human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) reported on Tuesday that a Saudi court has sentenced a woman – Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtanito – to 45 years in prison for using social media to “tear the social fabric” in Saudi Arabia. Two weeks prior, another Saudi woman, who is a women’s rights activist was sentenced to 34 years in prison for showing support for women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia in a series of tweets.
