Saudi Gazette report
DAMMAM — The spokesman of “the run-away teenage girl” has called upon human rights authorities to investigate the content of two video clips carried by Twitter that showed her father torturing her youngest brother. The video clips have been published on YouTube.
The video clips, which have gone viral on the social media, showed the child being chained and beaten. People who watched the videos have called upon authorities to intervene and take punitive action against the family in accordance with the child protection law.
Dr. Maha Al-Muneef, chairperson of the National Family Safety Program, said the Ministry of Labor and Social Development was closely following the case of the Saudi teenage girl, who had run away from Turkey to Georgia while the family was vacationing Trabzon, northern Turkey.
“The ministry is very much concerned with the issue and has been keeping in touch with the family’s members,” Al-Muneef told Al-Hayat Arabic daily. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan Embassy said authorities have located the run-away girl in Georgia and the family has refused to receive her.
Al-Muneef said her organization follows such torture cases in the Kingdom seriously. “We have seen that the girl’s brother has been subject to severe torture and his sister had run away after being tortured. Our role is to provide these children necessary support and care,” she said.
Al-Muneef said NFSP would contact with the Ministry of Labor and Social Development and rights organizations to provide the children with necessary protection and other services.
Khaled Al-Abalkhail, spokesman of the ministry, said legal action would be taken against those who torture children and inflict physical injury on them. “The culprits will be punished in accordance with the child protection law,” he twitted.
Dr. Khaled Al-Fakheri, secretary-general of the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR), said his organization was coordinating with relevant agencies to deal with the issue.
“We have set up a team to follow up such family violence cases published through the social media in order to make quick intervention,” he said.
Al-Fakheri emphasized the need to deal with such cases secretly in order to ensure safety and security of victims. “Even if the family is outside the Kingdom, it will be questioned for torturing children if the charges against the family are proved,” the NSHR official said.
He said it is the Labor and Social Development Ministry’s duty to give protection to such children on the basis of existing rules and regulations.
The 17-year-old girl had threatened her family that she would publish videos of her father torturing her and her young brother on Twitter if they did not stop tracking her and withdraw the petition given to police that she was absconding.The girl was located in Georgia as a result of the efforts of the Saudi Embassy in Turkey in coordination with the Azerbaijan Embassy and Turkish and Georgian authorities.
The girl had expressed her disappointment when the media did not publish the one-and-a-half minute video clip that showed her father torturing her youngest brother. The hashtag highlighting the issue of the runaway Saudi girl had received more than 30,000 followers in three days.
