Tide turns in debate about harassment

After second video is shared online days later, accosted women no longer seen as victims

In a minutelong video uploaded to YouTube last month, two young Saudi women walk along the waterfront promenade in the kingdom's Red Sea city of Jeddah as a group of young men jeer and follow them until the women become visibly agitated.

The video went viral and set off a public debate on the rights of women in a country that distinguishes itself as an Islamic state upholding segregation of the sexes that is among the strictest in the world.

Rights activists and commentators lambasted the men in the video for sexually harassing the women, who wore traditional black flowing robes known as abayas, along with face veils. Public outrage, expressed in the media and online, prompted a police investigation, and state-linked media reported that six of the men involved were detained and questioned.

Then, things took a sharp turn.

Days later, another video emerged, purportedly of the same two young women. It was shared on semiofficial news websites and carried on websites of privately owned channels such as Rotana TV, which suggested it had been recorded just before the women were accosted.

In that video, the women are riding a quad bike on the promenade as the young men watch. One of the women tosses toward the men an agal, the black rope worn by Saudi men over their traditional checkered head cloths. The young men break out in laughter and hooting at the gesture.

Suddenly, the women were no longer seen as victims and viewers accused them of being "indecent" and of provoking the men.

Though men and women in Saudi Arabia work alongside each other in places such as banks and hospitals, unmarried men and women are prohibited from mixing, in both public and private. Women adhere to an ultraconservative dress code that often includes completely covering the face.

Saudi women are not allowed to drive cars, and riding a quad bike is no less offensive in the more conservative provinces. But in Jeddah, the kingdom's cosmopolitan hub and the gateway for millions of Muslim pilgrims, some women do not cover their hair and the abayas are not always black.

Judicial adviser Yehia al-Shahrani told the state-linked Sabq news website he believes the women acted in a "seductive and tempting" manner.

He said it would be unjust to investigate and possibly refer the men to trial "without taking the same deserved action against those who seduced and aroused this to happen, which are the two girls".

He also blamed the young women's parents for allowing their daughters to be in a public place around young men.

The Justice Ministry said that 3,982 cases of sexual harassment were registered over the last two years. However, that figure includes cases of sexual assault and abuse, since there is no legal definition of what constitutes sexual harassment in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi women's rights activists and liberal pundits claim sexual harassment is all too common in the kingdom and are calling for a law that would criminalize such behavior.

"Harassment is something you see on a daily basis," activist Tamador Alyami said. "It's expected and accepted. That's how common it is. It only makes controversy when it's caught on camera."