Citroen withdrew an ad with this content after it sparked accusations that the ad was harassing women.
Cairo, Egypt:
French car maker Citroen withdrew on Thursday an advert featuring Egyptian singer Amr Diab after it sparked widespread accusations of promoting harassment of women.
In an advertisement posted on Egyptian social media in early December, the 60-year-old pop star used a camera mounted on the rearview mirror of a car to secretly photograph a woman crossing in front of the car.
The woman clearly disagreed with the photo, but Diab smiled at the photo as it popped up on his phone. He then invited the woman to join him in the car.
According to a survey by the Arab Barometer research network, ads were posted on social media in a country where about 90% of women aged 18 to 39 reported being harassed in 2019. .
Women’s rights activist Reel Abdellatif wrote on Twitter: “Photographing a woman without her consent is scary. “You are triggering sexual harassment.”
Another reviewer, Ahmed Tawfiikk, questioned how the company could think advertising was a good idea.
“How did this get approved in the first place?” he wrote, below the Instagram post.
“That’s the real issue here. This shows that there’s a whole TEAM of individuals along the way who never think ‘is this right?’, or ‘there’s nothing wrong with this? this?'”
On Thursday, Citroen said it had removed the ad.
“We have been informed that a scene … has been deemed inappropriate,” Citroen wrote in a statement posted on their Instagram account.
“We have decided to withdraw this version of the advertisement … and we sincerely apologize to all of the community offended by this film.”
Online, people are constantly criticizing Diab, a super tycoon in the Arab world, for his part in advertising and not apologizing.
“People see him as an idol and he is well aware of the unsafe situations that Egyptian women regularly face,” wrote one Twitter user named Mena.
“It’s alarming that he doesn’t see the red flags in this scenario.”
Diab posted ads on its social media accounts so that millions of Arabs had access to it.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
