Mahmoud Ahmad
LAST week, I received an email with a video clip from a person who said that a group of Saudis were abusing and beating up an expat, who after the ferocious beating was left bleeding on the ground. I have to mention here that the expatriate, who sent me this clip, does not speak or understand Arabic and was not aware of what was being said in the clip.
The clip, however, showed a group of young Saudis venting their anger on an expat and he was on the ground beaten and bruised with blood coming out from his mouth. The video clip revealed that the group surrounding this expat was angrily shouting at him and, at various points, interrogating him for answers. The person was slapped and kicked many times in the clip.
I searched for the video online and found the clip and from it really learned the news behind it. According to news websites reports, the group claimed that the expat had broken into a house and assaulted a man and his daughter. Whether the expat’s intention was to steal or attack the girl was not in the report and little other information was revealed at that time until police issued a statement saying that the expat, who is Yemeni national, was arrested for stealing at a number of homes, until he was captured by the group in his latest failed attempt to steal. He confessed to stealing money, jewelry and other expensive items. In addition, the clip showed a person, who said that the girl, following the assault, was battling for her life because of him.
Many may feel and say that the assaulted expat, the thief in this case, deserved what he got and the group had every right to react this way, especially after a girl was attacked in this case and is fighting for her life, according to what was in the clip. I do not know how many of us would react like the mob, if God forbid, we were exposed to such situation. Would we take matters into our own hands or hand the matter to the authorities and police and let the person have his time in court and get punishment?
Little that is known that such video clips when they go public can be easily used against us to damage the reputation of the Kingdom. In these days of instant connectivity, there would be no control of where such clips would land. A person may use this video to show the West and the non-Arabic speaking nations, how expats are being treated. In these days of sophisticated tools, the video can easily be fabricated to show an innocent man being beaten up by a group of Saudis or robbed of his money or abused simply because Saudis hate expats.
In this case, of the Yemeni expat being taken to task by a group, what should have happened is to catch the man, resist from taking the law into our own hands and then hand him over to the authorities to mete out justice without taping him, the incident and then making it viral on the social media. I believe taping and circulating the clip was a bad move. Although the motivation behind circulating the clip could have been to warn people to be careful or to make the thief an example of what awaits those caught stealing, but still this taping and making it public may damage us.
I remember receiving another email long time back when there was a problem with the Ethiopian expats. Someone sent a picture of a man’s body tied up and being burned with Saudi police officers standing around the body. The email said that a group of Saudi officers killed and burned the body of the Ethiopian expat in the desert. Being a journalist and having read about this crime before, I easily traced it to the source. It was the body of an African national, not Ethiopian, who was murdered by a group from Africa, and they then burned the body in order to cover up their crime. Police just arrested the group and had nothing to do with the crime.
When I responded to the mail and explained this to him while providing him with the link of the story in Arabic, he emailed me back saying that this picture was circulating with the false claim of officers killing a person. Imagine what would be the case when video clips that actually show assault, even if the expat here was guilty, but it will for sure backfire on us.
It is not favorable to take matters in ones own hand. This is the job of authorities, and in this case police. It bothers me a lot when I receive and sometimes find in social media or websites clips that are misinterpreted and taken out of context and used to show how violent or abusive we Arabs are. Such things are a headache to us, and lots of time and energy is wasted trying to explain what really happened and presenting the true picture.
Authorities should stress the importance of the civilians not doing the police’s job, and the citizen’s role ends with handing over the suspect to authorities if he was caught first by citizens. Video taping any criminal caught, be it a Saudi or non-Saudi, and circulating the clip on websites without police knowledge should be treated as a violation.
— The writer can be reached at mahmad@saudigazette.com.sa
Twitter: @anajeddawi_eng
