A disturbing number of videos were posted recently on YouTube that signals some very real problems in Saudi society, particularly our behavior and the government’s reaction to it.
Over the past weeks, Saudis have been horrified to view one video of a Saudi father putting his infant son in a roasting pan with vegetables as if was ready to cook him. It was a joke and the child was unharmed, but the mere thought of subjecting an infant to something so gruesome is beyond the pale. Another video showed a young boy chased around a mosque by his Qur’an teacher with a stick and beating him and pulling his hair.
Another child in a daycare center was force-fed and then beaten about the face because he wouldn’t eat. One teacher, in another video, beat his students simply because he was in a bad mood. And in a terrible act of depravity, three men who captured a fox that had killed and eaten their chickens, placed the fox in a cage, doused it with gasoline and set it on fire.
I doubt that we are more prone to violence than we had been in the past, but certainly in the age of video we can now witness more acts of violence without much effort. Yet these videos demonstrate the underlying anger many Saudis possess. There is no justification for burning an animal alive much less beating a child in a mosque.
It’s also difficult to justify the argument that these are isolated cases. Each incident — from the chicken farmers to the mosque to the daycare center to school — depicts each slice of daily lives in Saudi society. This anger is not dealt with despite the outrage voiced on social media.
We as a society have now passed laws that deal with domestic violence, yet we took those steps reluctantly and with hesitation. We have a hot line to report abuse, but we have no inkling of what happens to the perpetrators of violence following their arrest or how their victims are protected. The Shoura Council recently abandoned its efforts to recommend anti-harassment laws.
The government should take the lead to educate Saudis about abuse and how to protect victims. The media have not taken up the call to hold abusers accountable for their actions. The government not long ago made it a crime for individuals to videotape or photograph people without the person’s consent. It makes no distinction between secretly videotaping an individual, such as a student being ridiculed in school, or an adult beating a child. When a crime is videotaped then the photographer should be rewarded not punished.
The policy discourages people from reporting abuse, but instead prompts them to post videos anonymously on YouTube that results in condemnation and forces authorities to act. It’s a convoluted and inefficient means of exposing abusers.
We still struggle with the concept of codified laws. We also struggle with the boundaries of private and public behavior. When does private behavior become public? When is it the public’s business to intervene? I say that when an adult abuses a child or tortures animals for sport and then proudly posts videos of their sickness on YouTube, or is caught on videotape and someone else who posts it, then it’s not private business. We as a society have a public duty to protect children and defenseless animals. It’s our religious obligation.
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