Three Emirati Men Ejected From Festival For Being Too Handsome

Three Emiratis have been forcibly removed from an annual culture festival in Saudi Arabia and sent back to the UAE (United Arab Emirates) after it was suggested that women might find them irresistible. (I am unable to find a picture of the actual three Emiratis removed. Photo courtesy: FAYEZ NURELDINE, AFP/Getty Images

Three Emiratis have been forcibly removed from an annual culture festival in Saudi Arabia and sent back to the UAE after it was suggested that women might find them irresistible.

The delegates from the UAE were at the Jenadrivah Heritage and Culture Festival in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, when religious police officers stormed the stand and evicted the men because “they are too handsome”, according to the Arabic language newspaper Elaph.

“A festival official said the three Emiratis were taken out on the grounds they are too handsome and that the Commission [for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vices] members feared female visitors could fall for them,” Elaph reported.

The UAE released an official statement indicating that the religious police were anxious about the unexpected presence of an unnamed female artist in the pavilion.

“Her visit to the UAE stand was a coincidence as it was not included in the programme which we had already provided to the festival’s management,” Saeed Al Kaabi, head of the UAE delegation to the festival, said in a statement.

It was not clear if the woman’s presence was related to the decision to evict the “handsome” Emirati men.

Elaph said the festival’s management took swift action to deport the trio back to Abu Dhabi, capital of the Emirates.

Saudi Arabia is a deeply religious and ultraconservative society that forbids women from interacting with unrelated males and refuses to accord them the same rights as men.

It is the only country in the world where women are banned from driving.

This is one subject I should never get started on - women's rights. However, the damage's been done, I've started; so, I shall continue.

While it was the three Emerati men that were ejected from the festival and returned to their homeland; the insult is truly against women. Anyone who can't see that shouldn't be trying to read this blog because they are visually impaired on more than one level.

The men were victims in this, too - don't get me wrong. They may or may not have been humiliated by the incident; but, they were denied access to the festivities of this annual celebration attended by their friends and neighbours. Not fair! Those men had planned for this, looked forward to it and spent money attending. Absolutely not fair; however, the insult to the women is even less fair.

What is being said by the men of the commission - out loud and unashamedly - is that women are unable to control themselves to any degree when faced with a good-looking man. They are insinuating that women have no real control over their actions when it comes to dealing with sexual temptations. They are also insinuating that men are able to control their emotions no matter what the temptations. I notice that no beautiful women were asked to leave the festival in case some men might find them irrestible.

One day their eyes may open; but, I'm afraid it won't be in my lifetime.

From Toxic Dump to Healthy Park

The restored Wadi Hanifah. Photo courtesy: © Aga Khan Award for Architecture / Arriyadh Development Authority.

A public-health hazard has become "a place to breathe" in crowded Riyadh, where a decade-long restoration project has transformed a rubbish dump into a vast desert oasis.

The once fertile and scenic Wadi Hanifah suffered dramatically as the Saudi capital expanded rapidly. The city used the river valley "as a throughway for utility lines and a dumping ground for construction waste" as well as industrial effluent and "discharge from the city's overcapacity sewage treatment plant," according to an article last year in Canadian Architect magazine.

When the Arriyadh Development Authority began working to restore the valley, the first step was "removing 1.5 million cubic meters of debris ranging from construction waste to dead animals," according to the Mideast environmental news site Green Prophet.

Natural wastewater treatment is incorporated into the new green space.
Photo courtesy: © Aga Khan Award for Architecture / Arriyadh Development Authority.

Some 35,000 indigenous trees, as well as native grasses, now provide a buffer against dangerous flash floods while shading a 70-kilometer stretch of the river that includes 43 kilometers of paths for walking and biking. To keep the area from becoming polluted once again, the project, spearheaded by the Canadian architecture and planning firm Moriyama & Teshima and the U.K. engineering firm Buro Happold, also included the creation of an artificial wetland system to naturally clean the wastewater that once almost destroyed the river.

The restoration, while impressive, does not solve all of Riyadh's environmental ills, of course. Critics have suggested that some of the $1.5 billion spent on the high-profile project might have been better used hooking up the third of city households that remain unconnected to mainline sewerage, the BBC reported. The news agency also noted the lack of public consultation on the project but painted an overall positive picture of its impact on local residents' lives.

"Riyadh has no open space," engineer Saud Al Ajmi told the BBC. "Wadi Hanifah has become a place to breathe."