Saudi Arabia fights to rehabilitate its image

The developments have brought Khashoggi’s gruesome murder to international attention once more. But up until now, Saudi Arabia has slowly but surely been emerging from underneath the shadow of that crime.

In October 2018, global headlines about the assassination, allegedly committed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, saw a renewed focus on the Saudis’ dismal record on human rights, as well the country’s authoritarian leadership practices.

In terms of international diplomacy at least, the Saudis have been something of a pariah state for the past three years. While campaigning for the office he now holds, US President Joe Biden even described Saudi Arabia as such, saying “there was very little social redeeming value in the present government.” Biden has yet to have a personal conversation with Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

This month though, French President Emmanuel Macron did exactly that, becoming the first Western leader to visit the 36-year-old crown prince, who’s often known as MBS, at home.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia was also garnering global attention last weekend by hosting a Formula One Grand Prix car race for the very first time and, this week, by opening the inaugural Red Sea International Film Festival. Until 2018, public cinemas were banned in Saudi Arabia, thanks to ultraconservative religious ideals promoted by the Saudi clergy and royal family.

The events are part of a grand plan, Vision 2030, to modernise the country socially and economically. Hundreds of millions are being poured into one of the objectives of Vision 2030, which is to bring these kinds of events and this kind of positive attention to Saudi Arabia. 

Human rights organisations have criticised this, claiming that it’s a deliberate tactic to deflect attention from human rights abuses. In fact, the rehabilitation of Saudi Arabia’s image and the country’s return to international diplomacy has been going on for a while, Eckart Woertz, head of Hamburg’s GIGA Institute for Middle East Studies, pointed out.

“There seems to be a widespread view that, OK, we showed them the red lines — for example, that it is not acceptable to simply murder people in your consulate — and they have not appeared to cross those red lines again,” Woertz told DW. “There have been no similar, high profile cases since. And that is why diplomatic and business ties are becoming more prominent again, the way they were before the Khashoggi murder.” It is also true that, at the same time as overt diplomatic relations were getting colder, there was still plenty of business being done behind the scenes. 

Weapons sales to Saudi Arabia by the US and France have continued, with France the biggest vendor to Saudi Arabia in 2020. Arms sales from Canada and Germany resumed last year.

“While Saudi Arabia has, since 2017, introduced some landmark social and women’s rights reforms and has recently announced criminal justice and labor rights reforms, this has also been the worst period of repression in Saudi Arabia’s modern history,” Hiba Zayadin, a Human Rights Watch researcher focused on abuses in Arab Gulf states, told DW.

The Saudi Arabian leadership continues to try and ensure the world’s attention is on topics like business deals, entertainment and auto racing, she said, while at the same time silencing any dissenting voices.