A recent Snapchat video posted by a young Saudi Arabian woman has gone viral and drawn criticism from the country’s most conservative spaces, offline and online.
The video, allegedly posted by a model named Khulood, shows her walking through a fort in Ushaiager, a village north of Saudi capital Riyadh.
#DemandTheTrialofKhulood
The woman was severely trolled on social media for her video, with a number of hate tweets being directed at her – several accompanied by an Arabic hashtag that translates to #DemandTheTrialofKhulood. Some social media users reacted by capturing screenshots of the video and posting censored versions of them on the web.
Others even went as far as to demand that the women be arrested for failing to adhere to the country’s dress code – women in Saudi Arabia are required to wear loose robes known as abayas in public.
“It’s 2017”
While a number of social media users demanded that the woman be punished, a section of social media users stepped forward to defend the woman’s actions.
No Country For Women?
Saudi Arabia was elected to the United Nations Women’s Rights Commission in April this year. The move sparked outrage among several women and human rights organisations. Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, for instance, said on Twitter that electing Saudi Arabia to protect women’s rights is like “making an arsonist into the town fire chief.”
The Associated Press quoted Saudi news website Sabq as saying that the country’s morality police had corresponded with other agencies to investigate the video further.
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