Women, some without headscarves, drove themselves to a Formula E race where thousands of young Saudi Arabians and hundreds of international visitors partied into the night at concerts by Enrique Iglesias, The Black Eyed Peas and DJ David Guetta.
It is a vision of Saudi Arabia that epitomizes Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s top-down reform efforts.
The spectacle would have been unthinkable until recently in the ultra-conservative kingdom where religious police used to enforce strict gender segregation, scolded women for not covering their hair and barged into restaurants to demand music be turned off.
Illustration: Mountain People
The concerts and car race cap several months of profound change in Saudi Arabia, including the opening of the first movie theater in April and the lifting of the world’s only ban on women driving in June, but there is a hard limit to the reforms — as revealed by the brutal killing of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabian agents close to the crown prince in October and the reported torture of several women’s rights activists in detention.
While the arena for fun is widening, the space for political engagement and dissent has virtually disappeared.
The 33-year-old crown prince, backed by his father, King Salman, presides over a nation where he alone defines the pace and scope of change.
It is difficult to gauge the prince’s domestic popularity, given the reservations and fear many have of criticizing the leadership, but his reforms are popular among young Saudi Arabians, who believe their cities should offer some of the glitz and entertainment of neighboring Dubai or Abu Dhabi.
“This is a major change in Saudi Arabia and we are proud of it,” said Abdelrahman al-Mahmoud, 29, a spectator at the Formula E race in the capital, Riyadh.
He expressed pride in a nation he feels is finally coming into its own.
When asked about the crown prince, al-Mahmoud described him as “the most popular guy” in Saudi Arabia.
Pressed for his thoughts on Khashoggi’s killing, he tensed up, like other Saudis interviewed at the race, and said he came to enjoy the day and did not want to discuss politics.
The death of Khashoggi, who was killed and dismembered inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, seemed a world away from the carefree atmosphere at the race where concert-goers belted out Long Live Salman to house beats remixed by Guetta.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, three prominent women’s rights activists are being held in Riyadh’s Ha’ir Prison.
They were arrested in May, enduring abuse and torture at the hands of masked interrogators in the Red Sea city of Jiddah before being transferred to Riyadh this month.
The women, among more than a dozen female activists being held, were whipped and caned on their backs and thighs, and electrocuted, according to five people with knowledge of their treatment.
All spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal and to protect personal details about the detainees.
They said some of the women were forcibly touched and kissed, at least one was water-boarded, and one attempted suicide during confinement.
They said one woman was threatened with being raped, killed and dumped in a ditch, allegedly by a senior official wearing a mask. The detainee purportedly recognized him by some of his features.
The allegation could not be confirmed independently.
The government has denied charges of abuse as “wild claims” that are “simply wrong.”
The arrest of women’s rights activists, accused of vague national security crimes, was one of the incongruities in the reform agenda that Khashoggi wrote about in the Washington Post before he was killed.
The kingdom denies the crown prince knew of the plot. He has been supported by US President Donald Trump, who has touted US-Saudi Arabian ties.
However, the US Senate passed a unanimous resolution saying it believes the crown prince is to blame for the murder. His critics point to US intelligence reports and say an operation such as this could not have happened without his knowledge.
The killing badly damaged the prince’s international image as a transformational leader committed to changes Saudi Arabia’s allies in the West long hoped for.
Those changes are being promoted cautiously at home.
While the English-language Saudi Arabian newspaper Arab News touted the Formula E race as a “coming of age” event for the reform agenda, the more widely seen Arabic-language state TV channel only briefly carried images of the crown prince at the race and did not show the concerts or women without headscarves — images that much of the Saudi Arabian public strongly disagrees with.
For 22-year-old Maram Ali, who normally wears a headscarf in public, the race was a rare chance to literally let her hair down. Like many women at the event, she kept the required loose-fitting robe, known as an abaya, on, but walked around without a head-covering.
“These changes should have happened a long time ago,” she said, crediting the crown prince. “People are opening up... It’s not like before where we were going backward and the world outside is moving forward.”
The reform agenda is fueled in part by the need to power the economy in the face of lower crude oil prices. Unemployment has risen to almost 13 percent, while the cost of electricity and water have skyrocketed as subsidies are rolled back.
This week, the king announced an extension of a multibillion-dollar package of monthly allowances for much of the public.
A father of two who goes by the name Abu Turki said he has been out of work for six months after he lost his job because of company cost-cutting. He supplements his government benefits, some of which run out in six months, working as a driver for the ride-hailing app Uber.
Like many Saudi Rabians, he had heard of the Formula E race, but for religious reasons that for decades have been propagated in this conservative nation which is home to Islam’s holiest sites, he did not agree with the idea of unrelated men and women mixing.
Speaking from behind a black face veil, Jawaher Othman, 55, had mixed feelings.
She said the cool weather encouraged her to visit the race, but she had no intention of staying for the concert.
“May God correct their path and bless them,” she said of young concert-goers. “I personally don’t agree with the concerts and it’s not for me, but it’s not up to me ban it or say anything.”
With escalating US-China competition and mutual distrust, the trend of supply chain “friend shoring” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fragmentation of the world into rival geopolitical blocs, many analysts and policymakers worry the world is retreating into a new cold war — a world of trade bifurcation, protectionism and deglobalization. The world is in a new cold war, said Robin Niblett, former director of the London-based think tank Chatham House. Niblett said he sees the US and China slowly reaching a modus vivendi, but it might take time. The two great powers appear to be “reversing carefully
As China steps up a campaign to diplomatically isolate and squeeze Taiwan, it has become more imperative than ever that Taipei play a greater role internationally with the support of the democratic world. To help safeguard its autonomous status, Taiwan needs to go beyond bolstering its defenses with weapons like anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles. With the help of its international backers, it must also expand its diplomatic footprint globally. But are Taiwan’s foreign friends willing to translate their rhetoric into action by helping Taipei carve out more international space for itself? Beating back China’s effort to turn Taiwan into an international pariah
Typhoon Krathon made landfall in southwestern Taiwan last week, bringing strong winds, heavy rain and flooding, cutting power to more than 170,000 homes and water supply to more than 400,000 homes, and leading to more than 600 injuries and four deaths. Due to the typhoon, schools and offices across the nation were ordered to close for two to four days, stirring up familiar controversies over whether local governments’ decisions to call typhoon days were appropriate. The typhoon’s center made landfall in Kaohsiung’s Siaogang District (小港) at noon on Thursday, but it weakened into a tropical depression early on Friday, and its structure
Since the end of the Cold War, the US-China espionage battle has arguably become the largest on Earth. Spying on China is vital for the US, as China’s growing military and technological capabilities pose direct challenges to its interests, especially in defending Taiwan and maintaining security in the Indo-Pacific. Intelligence gathering helps the US counter Chinese aggression, stay ahead of threats and safeguard not only its own security, but also the stability of global trade routes. Unchecked Chinese expansion could destabilize the region and have far-reaching global consequences. In recent years, spying on China has become increasingly difficult for the US
RSS