RIYADH, 17 May — Security officials here meted out punishment to seven secondary and university students caught harassing women in public places on Tuesday. The offenders were given 15 lashes each as ‘educational punishment’.
Police arrested the students from shopping malls at Aqariah market and Prince Muhammad ibn Abdul Aziz Road. The punishment was carried out at the Suleimaniah police jail where they had been detained, a source at the Suleimaniah police station said.
The boys were nabbed for following women around, trying to talk to them, passing on phone numbers or just whistling at the opposite sex.
The police had handed out similar punishment to four other youths, who were arrested in similar circumstances, earlier this month.
In another development, police gave 35 lashes to a youth for harassing girls in Al-Rashid Mall in Alkhobar on Monday. Alkhobar’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice had ordered the summary punishment of another youth on Saturday on similar charges.
The youth was caught harassing women by the police at the same commercial center.
Regional authorities have set up special committees to handle the increasing tendency among youths to harass women in various parts of the Kingdom.
The committees comprise representatives from the respective governorate, police, Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice and the Prosecution and Investigations Department.
The committee stipulates that the culprits should be set free soon after the punishment on bail after a written undertaking from them that they would not repeat the crime.
Meanwhile, a lady lecturer at a Taif college received minor injuries when an angry female student assaulted her.
The student was provoked by the lecturer’s repeated demand to shut off her mobile phone while in the lecture hall.
In the light of increasing reports of student violence in schools Kingdomwide, several parents and teachers are demanding the reintroduction of caning in schools.
