Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends the G20 Leaders’ Summit via videoconference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on October 30, 2021.
Royal Court of Saudi Arabia | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman lit up social media with his blunt response to accusations that his government is “sportswashing,” or using sports to distract attention from its controversial human rights record.
Quite simply, he made it clear that he did not care.
“If sportswashing is going to increase my GDP by 1%, then we will continue doing sportswashing,” the de-facto Saudi leader said in an interview with Fox News that aired Wednesday night. “I don’t care. I have 1% growth in GDP from sport, and I am aiming for another 1.5%. Call it whatever you want.”
Human rights organizations immediately seized on the comments, criticizing what some said was proof of a state policy of hiding human rights violations behind an expensive veneer of big-ticket sports acquisitions and tournaments.
“He’s done more than say he doesn’t care,” Minky Worden, Human Rights Watch’s director of global initiatives, told NBC News. “He’s really endorsed the idea of sportswashing as a way of covering up the country’s very serious human rights abuses. We’ve now heard from the top that this is state policy.”
She added in a post on social media site X: “Huge investments in #sportswashing by #SaudiArabia+MBS won’t cover up grave #HumanRights abuses: killing of hundreds of unarmed migrants, jailing women’s rights advocates+ murder of journalist #JamalKashoggi.”
A demonstrator dressed as Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (C) with blood on his hands protests outside the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC, on October 8, 2018, demanding justice for missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images
Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi journalist who was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. U.S. intelligence findings pointed to Mohammed bin Salman as having…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply