RIYADH (Middle East Eye) – It was Elise Schouten’s first time in Saudi Arabia.
The 25-year-old Dutch woman was in Riyadh at the beginning of December to attend MDL Beast Soundstorm, the Persia Gulf kingdom’s giant rave held in a remote desert outside the capital.
The event has been lauded as one of the world’s biggest music festivals this year. But it has come under renewed criticism over incidents of harassment of women, despite pledges by organizers to combat the abuse.
Held from 1-3 December, the festival attracted over 730,000 fans and featured diverse music acts, spanning electronic to hip-hop.
Schouten, a lover of electronic music who works at the Dutch embassy in Cairo, had come with her roommate to Riyadh for the weekend to attend Soundstorm. From the time they arrived at the concert, Schouten said, a number of men were shouting and trying to touch them.
“I was holding on to my friend as the crowd became denser as we made our way to the stage, and then I felt it three times, someone grab my behind,” Schouten told Middle East Eye. “I turned around and shouted and screamed at them, but they didn’t stop. Instead, the hand reached for me again.”
After being criticized in its first two years, in 2019 and 2021, for harassment, MDL Beast organizers took extra steps through their Respect & Reset campaign, and beefed up security and safe dancing zones to prevent sexual and other harassment, particularly targeting women, among its various stages and venues.
Despite such efforts, after the festival ended and through its next event - MDL Balad Beast, which took place in Jeddah on 9 and 10 December - floods of women who had been harassed in Riyadh took to social media to voice their stories and complaints.
“I noticed we were surrounded by only guys - there were no girls in sight, and that is when the panic kicked in,” Schouten said.
Schouten said she found a security officer and told him what had happened. He asked her to locate the man and he would kick him out. By that time, Schouten had no idea where the man had gone, except back into the sea of people.
“There was no “Are you okay? Are you all right?’” said Schouten. “We stood there for a while before we made our way to the stages. On an unspoken level, we knew this was only going to get worse.”
She later filed a complaint with the event management, which responded that a number of suspected harassers were evicted from the event.
Another incident, which took social media by storm, was recounted by Finnish nurse Erika Milia.
“Last night was one of the most traumatic experiences I’ve ever had,” she wrote on Instagram. “I’ve always felt safe and valued as a woman in Saudi, but all of that went out the window last night and big time. Me and my friends were sexually harassed and molested by an outrageous number of men during one of the biggest music festivals in the Middle East.”
Both Saudi and foreign women commented on her post, while dozens went to the account of MDL Beast to list their grievances.