The grisly reality behind Dubai’s porta potty parties

Monic Karungi died by suicide in 2022 (Picture: BBC)

It’s a grim video, even by today’s deeply disturbing standards of the internet. A woman is standing on the ledge of a window of a high-rise building, while a panicked voice in a foreign language can be heard. The woman appears to jump, arms splayed, falling to a certain death.

She was identified in the comments as Ugandan influencer Mona Kizz, who briefly became the internet’s main character after she apparently featured in a viral #DubaiPortaPotty TikTok video in 2021.

It was a hashtag that acted as shorthand to berate young women in Dubai supposedly seeking a luxury lifestyle at any price. However, a new BBC documentary and podcast series has uncovered the disturbing truth behind both videos and the parties in question.

The reality is far darker, hidden under the bedazzling bright lights of Dubai.

It was true that Mona – real name Monic Karungi – had died by suicide falling from a high-rise building in Dubai, but that was in 2022. The video making the rounds, claiming to show her fall, was not Monic at all. It wasn’t even filmed in the UAE, and the panicked voice in the background was actually speaking Russian. The woman in that particular video has never been identified.

However, it was merely the first of a catalogue of lies surrounding Monic’s death that journalist and producer Runako Celina discovered when she started researching her story for a new BBC documentary, Death in Dubai and accompanying podcast series of the same name.

Monic moved from Uganda to Dubai with the hope of finding a new life (Pictures: BBC)

The reporter had been left both fascinated and disturbed by the internet’s reaction not only to the apparent suicide video in 2021, but also another that had gone viral, alleged to be of Monic, who had moved to Dubai in search of a better life.

This video was deeply graphic – it showed a man defecating in a woman’s mouth – and went viral on TikTok in 2021. Monic was attributed as the female involved, however this has never been verified.

What is the Dubai porta potty meme?

‘I’d heard about ‘Dubai porta potty’ videos online for some time,’ Runako told Metro. ‘When Monic passed away in 2022, her name had been implicated in an online witch-hunt, and I saw so much misinformation had been spread by commentators online.’

‘Dubai Porta Potty parties’ reference a setting where young women have been taken to Dubai by wealthy men, then paid to fulfil often degrading sex acts (Picture: Getty Images)

Rumours of ‘porta potty parties’ in Dubai were commonplace, but for some reason, it was this specific video that spread rapidly, with the hashtag #DubaiPortaPotty garnering a staggering 450 million views.

Prominent TikTok figures made quick reactions to the video, with thousands of comments describing the woman filmed as ‘disgusting’ and asking why she ‘had no shame’. Monic’s Instagram, which is still active, has numerous comments under her photos referencing the video.

While the 2021 viral TikTok is certainly one of the most graphic examples, word of ‘Dubai porta potty parties’ is nothing new. The phrase is bandied about on the internet to describe young, attractive women (typically influencers or OnlyFans models), who are invited over to Dubai by supremely wealthy men, where they are paid to act out a series of fetishes or sexual behaviours. They are typically associated with extreme degradation of the women that take part, with urination and scat play thought to be common practice.

Runako investigating Monic’s suicide (Picture: BBC) Fetishes and false promises

One British woman, Saint Mullan, claims she was approached on Instagram by a man offering her and a friend £16,000 to fly over to Dubai for a party in exchange for partaking in feet and urination fetishes (the messages have never been independently verified).

Meanwhile, Ukrainian model Maria Kovalchuk was found severely injured on the side of the road in Dubai, with many fearing she may have been a victim of a rowdy Dubai porta potty party (she has since denied this was the case).

Monic had been lured to Dubai by someone she had connected with in Uganda (Picture: BBC)

With Monic, her supposed death was co-opted by the internet and essentially made a meme, a cautionary tale warning young girls from chasing the glossy, influencer lifestyle at the cost of their ‘self-worth’.

‘I think the internet has fostered this culture online where we’re all much more comfortable in commenting on each other,’ Runako says. ‘It also intersects with our obsession with celebrity culture, which now also includes influencers.

‘I don’t think it’s by chance Monic was painted as a glamorous influencer; it feeds into the idea that we can speak about those women in a particular way because they’re fair game.’

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Runako uncovered throughout her two-year investigation that Monic was far from the glamorous influencer people were speaking about. The youngest of 11 children, she had spent most of her life on her family’s farm with her siblings and relatives.

Monic had never left her home country of Uganda before heading to Dubai – and she wasn’t even an influencer; she had fewer than 2000 followers at the time of her death at just 24. New followers flocked to her Instagram posthumously.

Monic’s family farm in Uganda (Picture: BBC)

As Runako discovers, Monic had been lured to Dubai by someone she had connected with in Uganda, who was offering routine, regular work (likely a retail role) in the UAE. While her Instagram showed pictures of her enjoying Dubai and the luxury trappings which make it such a playground for the rich, Monic was actually living in squalid, filthy conditions with around 50 other women, many also from Uganda.

The work she was offered turned out to be a lie, but she was trapped as she was told she had to pay back the visas and airfare to a different man – Charles Mwesigwa, known locally as ‘Abbey’ – who effectively worked as a pimp (a man Runako learns previously worked as a bus driver in East London) taking numerous girls to high-end nightclubs to get sex work.

Mwesigwa vehemently denies these accusations in the documentary, but is also filmed claiming he can provide women to do ‘pretty much anything’ for rich clients at Dubai sex parties.