In Kuwait, a brutal beating is caught on film, and a Twitter storm follows

Published August 12th, 2015 - 09:41 GMT
Just another terrible video documenting violence against women in the Gulf. (AFP/File)
Just another terrible video documenting violence against women in the Gulf. (AFP/File)

There's more social media storming coming out of the Gulf this week over a leaked video documenting the brutal beating of a woman in the Kuwaiti city of Mubarakiya. It's a shaky, short video that's shot discretely from the sidelines, so it's a little hard at first to understand what's on. But not long into the footage you see an older man attacking a fully veiled woman on the street. The content was so violence that the original video was removed from YouTube just a day after being released. 

In it, you see an older man run continuously at a woman in the middle of a crowded marketplace, lunging at her and accussing her of stealing money from him. At one point, he takes off his agal (the black rope used to secure men's head dresses) and begins beating her with it. 

This is hardly the first time something like this has come out of the Gulf. Just last month another videoaged the Twittersphere with footage of two Saudi women surrounded by a swarm of taunting men. And just like back then, the social media storm that followed this week's Kuwait footage was filled with just about everything you can think of as users responded under the hashtag
#رجل_يعتدي_علي_منقبه , Arabic for "man beats a woman in a niqab." 

Check out some of the responses below -- from rage, to apathy, to downright terrible.  

 

 

 

Translation: He is a coward and he lacks manhood. No matter what reason he has he is not allowed to do this. Only an evil man will do this to a woman.

Translation: No one has the right to beat up anybody else. In the video the woman backed up several times but he continues attacking her.

Translation: What is worse than the incident itself is the man who filmed this video. He should have beaten up that man instead of standing and filming.

Translation: It’s her mistake, she has done something wrong, however I am against the way the man dealt with the situation

Translation: As if it is not enough to force all women to wear the black cover (abaya). We have to make it worse by beating them up.

Translation: As Ibin Tiamya said, the woman is owned by her husband so he as the right to beat her up.

Translation: Wearing the Niqab (face cover) does not mean that she is innocent, however I did not search the case yet.

Translation: What actually killed me was the shop owner, he is afraid of getting his stuff broken so he removed it without paying any attention to the woman.

Translation: He did that because she stole money from him, we can hear him in the video saying “give me back my money”

Subscribe

Sign up to our newsletter for exclusive updates and enhanced content