One of the young men who appeared among a group harassing two women in a park in Jeddah in a video that went viral on social media last week was arrested Sunday, Gulf News reported.
The arrest was confirmed by the Mecco Province on its official Twitter account on Monday in a statement that said one of the young men who appeared in the video was arrested, that he identified who the other young men in the video were and that they are currently being pursued.
“Jeddah police, under the supervision of its chief, Major General Masoud al-Adwani, have begun analyzing the video and looking into information related to the incident. [They intend to] find out who was involved, expose their identities, summon them and take the appropriate legal measures against them,” Colonel Aati bin Attiyah Al-Qurashi told Al Arabiya .
The video that went viral on social media this past week as it got more than a million views on YouTube in less than four days, shows two women being harassed by a group of young men in a park the YouTube user claims to be along Jeddah’s Corniche.
The video quickly went viral on social media, sparking outrage from bloggers and Twitter users who used the Arabic hashtag that translates to "harassment of two girls in Jeddah" to voice their frustrations. The video was angrily condemned as it brought up renewed debates on the need to criminalize harassment in Saudi Arabia.
A blogger writing under the moniker of Saudi said “they are totally ridiculous and they should be taken to a court of law. There is no respect for our traditions and I want to ask if these boys would accept any form of harassment against their sisters or mothers. Unfortunately, many people are no longer concerned with our way of life.”
The video is not the first of its kind, however, as there have been multiple videos showing women being harassed in Saudi Arabia over the past few years. In October 2013, a video showing men harassing a group of women in a mall parking lot reportedly in the eastern city of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia also went viral and provoked a similar online response.
The media pressure, especially from Saudi Arabia's active online community, often results in the harassers being arrested and tried. In another viral video incident from 2013, young men were arrested for harassment after the video surfaced and were flogged inside the mall where the incident occurred in addition to receiving sentences of between one month and five months.
In 2012 a study reportedly conducted by a Saudi researcher about harassment on a sample of women aged between 18 and 48 showed that 78 percent of respondents claimed to have experienced harassment directly, and 92 percent said that harassment was increasing.
As a result, photos and videos documenting incidents in Saudi Arabia have been increasing in response in recent years as the online community continues to call for legislation that specifically singles out harassment.