• Saudi authorities have opened an investigation after videos surfaced online showing security forces beating teenage girls at an orphanage.
• A police officer appears to drag a screaming girl by her hair along the ground, while another official hits her with a belt.
• The governor of the southwestern Asir region said he had formed a committee to investigate the footage.

Saudi authorities have opened an investigation after videos surfaced online showing security forces beating teenage girls at an orphanage.

Police and officials in plainclothes are allegedly seen raiding the Social Education House in Khamis Mushait in the unconfirmed footage.

A police officer appears to drag a screaming girl by her hair along the ground, while another official hits her with a belt.

Other girls are beaten with wooden sticks and chased.

The circumstances and timing of the incident were unclear, but according to a Twitter user who claimed to have edited the videos, the girls were staging a “strike against corruption and injustice” after they “demanded their rights from the orphanage and were rejected.”

She later posted photos of bruises she claimed some of the girls received during the raid and claimed a senior official threatened them if the videos were not removed from social media.

After the footage was released on Tuesday night, human rights activists and dissidents expressed outrage, and the hashtag “Khamis Mushait Orphans” began trending on Twitter in Saudi Arabia.

The footage was “disturbing,” according to the UK-based rights group ALQST, and Saudi authorities “must hold the perpetrators accountable.”

The opposition National Assembly Party, made up of exiled dissidents, condemned the “vicious attacks” and demanded, “protection of girls in shelters and orphanages so that they can exercise their basic rights.”

In a statement issued on Wednesday, the governor of the southwestern Asir region said he had formed a committee to investigate the footage and that its findings would be forwarded to the appropriate authorities.

The incident occurs at a time when international concern is growing about women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, where the government has recently lifted a ban on women driving and relaxed male guardianship rules while also imprisoning prominent female activists as part of a crackdown on dissent.

This week, the US-based human rights organization Dawn reported that a Saudi woman had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for social media posts criticizing the kingdom’s leaders.

According to court documents, Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani was found guilty of “using the internet to tear the social fabric” and “violating public order by using social media.”

Salma al-Shehab, a PhD student at Leeds University, was sentenced to 34 years in prison earlier this month for her Twitter activity.

[embedpost slug=”saudi-arrested-at-13-released-says-rights-group/”]