OPINION: Saudi sporting playground state plan a plot to cover up human rights abuses
For a nation which would like you to think it is enlightened and intelligent these days, Saudi Arabia’s plan to create a playground state within its borders, where international sport is staged and Western laws and rights apply, is grim beyond belief.
In the real Saudi Arabia, the usual rules will apply and – unless there is a seismic change ahead – the misogyny, casual brutality and nasty little secrets of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s regime will go on. Those who transgress his codes will continue to know that they risk a fate like Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist and dissident who was seized, murdered and dismembered with a bone-saw at his country’s consulate in Istanbul just over a year ago.
Money is no object when it comes to using sport’s appeal to cover up human rights abuses like that. The Saudis’ great friends from Abu Dhabi have taught us so. ‘MBS’ – as the Crown Prince likes colloquially to be known – will be signing up public affairs experts to help develop the Neom city-state: his great con in the desert.
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