The Dakar in Saudi Arabia -
SIPA
Saudi Arabia has hosted a large number of sports competitions or exhibitions since the end of 2019.
This softpower policy aims to change the image of the country internationally in order to attract a growing number of tourists.
In France, voices are being raised for the organizers of sports competitions to stop accepting Saudi dollars by turning a blind eye to the human rights situation in the country.
After football, golf, boxing, and more, Saudi Arabia recently offered two new sporting events, the Saudi Tour cycling event and the Dakar, the second Saudi edition of which started this weekend.
And the Middle Eastern country does not intend to stop there and now dreams of organizing a Formula 1 Grand Prix. However little known for its love of sport, the Saudi regime suddenly fell in love with everything that runs. , who hits or who rolls.
Sudden awakening of a sporting flame?
Not really.
At the end of the line, Malik Salemkour laughs.
The president of the League for Human Rights has a completely different theory.
“These petrodollar purchases of major sporting events are nothing more than a cover-up operation to hide that Saudi Arabia is a barbaric theocracy that resorts to the death penalty, where political opponents, women, homosexuals and foreign minorities are discriminated against, attacked or imprisoned ”, he denounces.
On France Info, Antoine Madelin, director of advocacy at the International Federation for Human Rights denounced him "a media enterprise to restore the image of a bloodthirsty regime".
Like its neighbor and Qatari enemy, at the forefront of sports diplomacy after the takeover of Paris Saint-Germain in the summer of 2011 and the organization of the World Cup in 2022, Saudi Arabia has chosen sport as an instrument of power at the international level.
But unlike the small gas emirate, which uses football to extend its era of influence across the globe and expand its book of allies in the West in the face of neighbors as hostile as they are invading, the sporting coup of the Saudi Arabia is seen more by the regime as an economic lever.
Saudi Arabia wants to change its image
"This policy is part of the" Vision 2030 "plan put in place by Mohamed Ben Salman - the crown prince - which tends to diversify the country's economy because the oil windfall alone is no longer sufficient to satisfy a growing population.
The country derives 90% of its income from oil production, but this will eventually dry up, ”explains Clarence Rodriguez, correspondent for the French media in Riyadh for nearly 12 years.
The idea is simple - to develop the tourism economy via the media coverage of the various events, the realization is a little more cotton however.
Because Saudi Arabia does not come first in the list of countries we want to discover.
“The war in Yemen, the political assassinations, the sweeping purges (people from the family of Ben Salman have been embastiled in the name of a campaign against corruption), describes Clarence Rodriguez.
Not to mention the Khashoggi affair, this journalist assassinated at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018 and of which the CIA suspects the Saudi regime of being the sponsor.
"What makes him say, in comparison with the relative political success of softpower of Qatar, that" the liabilities are heavier for Saudi Arabia and that, therefore, the success of this policy of soft power is not guarantee.
"
Nacer Bouhanni during the Saudi Tour on February 7, 2020. - Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP
The checkbook policy
Yet so far, Saudi Arabia has not seemed to have much difficulty in convincing sporting event organizers to take a detour at home.
See instead.
Since December 2019 the ultra-conservative kingdom of the Arabian Peninsula has hosted the Ruiz-Joshua boxing match, the Italian Supercup, the Spanish Supercup, the Saudi international golf tournament, the Saudi Cycling Tour and therefore for the second time the Dakar, which started Sunday from Jeddah.
To do so, Crown Prince Mohamed Ben Salman, “MBS” for close friends, unsheathed the weapon of massive conviction: dollars.
A lot.
"Due to the financial windfall linked to oil, they can afford any major sporting event", notes the deputy Régis Juanico, author at the beginning of 2020 of a platform in the
JDD
to denounce the organization of the Dakar in the Saudi desert.
“No to the Dakar rally in Saudi Arabia”.
Serious breaches of human rights, the Khashoggi affair, war and humanitarian crisis in Yemen ... when the "diplomacy" of the checkbook takes precedence over #sport.
My forum in @leJDD here: https://t.co/78jQPwBtVM
- Régis JUANICO (@Juanico) December 29, 2019
In addition to his criticisms of the Saudi autocratic regime "far removed from the values of sport", the member of Mouvement Génération.s sees this "checkbook policy" as a more or less long-term danger for sport.
“When they buy the final of the Supercopa de Espana or Italy at 120 million euros, the boxing gala at 90 million euros or the Dakar at 15 million euros per year, they create a speculative bubble on sports rights.
Nobody can align, we are forming a kind of sports ghetto where there will be only a few ultra-rich or ultra-corrupt countries that can afford such events, ”he laments. .
“So much money,” clutches the deputy for Loire, “obviously it's tempting for lucrative private organizations looking for profitability and return on investment, but at what price?
"
Asked about this choice before the first edition of the Dakar in Saudi Arabia, David Castera, the new race boss at ASO (Amaury Sport Organization), puts forward a two-part argument.
We didn't start
“The Dakar is not the first to go to Saudi Arabia, there are already a lot of people going there.
There are a lot of companies that work there, that invest, a lot of sporting events.
Formula E paved the way, there were tennis matches, soccer matches, wrestling matches, boxing matches.
So the Dakar is in line with all these events.
"
Saudi Arabia is making efforts
“We met to reflect, but we had a lot of guarantees from the country, we know that there is a desire for openness.
Saudi Arabia wants to open up, so it is using these events to make itself known, to introduce the country, to attract tourists.
It is a development primarily through sport.
"
A final argument that makes Clarence Rodriguez jump.
"But let them say directly that they need the money and that they are going there to collect the big check!"
Since when has a sports competition been organized to help indigenous populations?
It is even more serious to say that, protests this specialist of the Sunni kingdom.
It reflects a lack of knowledge of the country.
Don't they know that one executes with a vengeance?
On the contrary to participate in the opening of the country, they endorse the policy of repression implemented by MBS.
"
An observation shared by the president of the League of Human Rights.
“ASO went to bed in front of the regime's money.
It is between them and their conscience.
Is the money worth the silence and the compromise ?, asks Malik Salemkour.
And then the argument of opening up the regime does not hold water for a second.
The fundamental elements of the regime remain the same, there is no democratic openness, no freedom of the press, no freedom of expression for political opponents, especially on social networks, women continue to be treated as sub-human beings, the living conditions in the prisons are unworthy, the military controls are particularly strong.
"
The EU to the rescue?
For his part, Régis Juanico believes more in a binding political action than in a hypothetical awakening of consciousness on the part of the organizers of sporting events.
For him, the European Union has a role to play in this.
“We need to be able to fight against that, we need a strong political power capable of imposing extremely precise specifications on the international sports federations on the conditions under which we organize major international sporting events.
"
Hard to imagine, however, when you see the way in which the French government (but it is not the only one), deals with Saudi Arabia.
“The problem, agrees Clarence Rodriguez, is that some countries, including France, put a veil on these issues.
They pretend not to see the truth.
They think they're going to get big contracts if they don't open their mouths, but that's peanut compared to Americans.
»And athletes.
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