An Egyptian TikToker residing in Saudi Arabia was arrested this week by capital police in Riyadh, who claimed she made sexually suggestive feedback to a different lady in a reside video and accused her of negatively affecting public morality.

Saudi Arabian safety officers took to Twitter Monday to announce the arrest of Tala Safwan, who has nearly five million followers on TikTok and 866,000 subscribers on YouTube. Although they didn’t identify Safwan of their put up, they included a blurred-out screenshot of her TikTok livestream with one other Saudi resident, a lady. A recording of the reside video unfold broadly in Saudi Arabia in latest days, prompting fury in addition to the hashtag “Tala offends society,” in line with English language media outlet Egyptian Streets.

“The Riyadh police arrested a resident who appeared in a broadcast talking to another with sexual content and suggestion that would prejudice public morals,” the dominion’s Interior Ministry tweeted, in line with an automatic translation of their put up.

Egyptian Streets identified that many customers on Twitter celebrated Safwan’s arrest. LGBT sexual exercise, in addition to the gender expression of trans people, is criminalized in Saudi Arabia and will be punished with the loss of life penalty. The Human Dignity Trust, a company that works to problem legal guidelines that discriminate in opposition to LGBT folks worldwide, explains that same-sex sexual exercise is prohibited beneath Sharia regulation and that Saudi Arabia operates with “an uncodified criminal code based upon Sharia principles.”

In the video, which is in Arabic, Safwan tells one other lady to return to her home in Riyadh, Egyptian Streets said. The TikToker reportedly mentioned that “everyone will be asleep” at dwelling and that “no one will hear her scream.” The BBC reports that Safwan responded to the net indignation and mentioned that she’d been misunderstood, claiming that the clip had been taken out of context to trigger a scandal.

Gizmodo reached out to TikTok for touch upon Safwan’s arrest however didn’t obtain a response by the point of publication.

It’s unclear what penalties Safwan will face or whether or not she is going to have the ability to struggle the allegations in court docket. Human Dignity Trust states that there’s substantial proof that the legal guidelines criminalizing LGBT exercise have been enforced through the years. However, the group discovered that it’s tough to offer correct estimates on the variety of arrests, prosecutions, and executions of LGBT and trans people due to the secretive nature of Saudi Arabian regulation enforcement.

In 2020, the dominion arrested and deported a Yemeni blogger for “promoting homosexuality online” and “imitating women.” The blogger, Mohamad al-Bokari, had posted a video advocating for equal rights for LGBT people. Meanwhile, in 2018, police arrested younger males who they declare appeared in a “gay wedding scene” on video, though it isn’t recognized whether or not they have been prosecuted.