Egyptian police on Saturday arrested a pop singer known as Shyma after she appeared in a music video in lingerie while suggestively eating a banana, officials said.
The racy video for her song “I Have Issues” had led to complaints, police officials said, adding she is suspected of “inciting debauchery.”The video has triggered a massive outcry in Egypt with critics saying it is full of sexual innuendos and is morally depraving.
In the video the hitherto little-known singer appears in a mock classroom licking an apple and appearing to mimic fellatio on a banana in front of a chalkboard scrawled with “Class #69” and the letters “vag.”
“Singer Shyma presents a lesson in depravity to youths,” thundered the Youm 7 newspaper in an article after the video was released.
It was not immediately clear whether she would be formally charged.
In a Facebook posting on Thursday, Shyma wrote that she had not anticipated the backlash against her video.
“I apologize to all the people who saw the clip and were upset by it and took it in an inappropriate way,” she wrote.
“I didn’t imagine all this would happen and that I would be subjected to such a strong attack from everyone, as a young singer…who has dreamed from a young age of being a singer,” she added.
The authorities under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi have cracked down on some artists in Egypt using wide-ranging morality laws.
In 2015, a court jailed a female dancer to a year in prison for “inciting debauchery” in a raunchy music video for a song called “Let Go of My Hand.
Egyptian police are estimated to have arrested over 50 people after several youths waved a rainbow flag at a Cairo pop concert in September.
Several have received prison sentences under laws prohibiting “debauchery” and “incitement to debauchery,”
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