Saudi police, together with the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, have arrested more than 100 people at a mixed-gender party in the city of Taif.

“Women took off their abayas and danced and mixed with men,” one Saudi news website reported.

Meanwhile there is media controversy over the flogging of 20 young men in the eastern province following acts of vandalism of September 23 – the eve of Saudi Arabia’s national day.

Twelve were flogged in Khobar and eight in Dammam on Monday. Each received 30 lashes. Four were said to be under the age of 18.

Although the floggings were carried out in public, The National 
points out that “the police tried to prevent people from taking photos or filming the flogging and because of that it changed the locations of the flogging in the two cities several times”.

While the punishment met with approval from some quarters (one headline urged “Flog them on YouTube”), others have been critical. 

Waleed Abu al Khair, a human rights activist and lawyer, complained that the youths had not appeared in court: the floggings were the result of an “administrative decision” and therefore infringed their rights. Even if they had been properly sentenced by a judge, he said the punishment would not have been acceptable in this case because it was not commensurate with the crime.

Abdu Khal, a columnist writing in Okaz, said the floggings showed the incompetence of Saudi society in dealing with the problem of youth crime and called for other methods to be explored.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 1 October 2009.