Mariah Carey refused to cancel her debut performance in Saudi Arabia last night despite activists begging her to call it off in solidarity with women’s rights campaigners jailed and mistreated in the kingdom.
Ms Carey headlined a concert on the sidelines of the kingdom’s first international golf tournament, part of a reform effort headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to cultivate long-forbidden entertainment.
Ms Carey is by far the highest-profile Western female entertainer to agree to perform in Saudi Arabia. She appeared alongside the Dutch DJ Tiesto and the Jamaican rapper Sean Paul.
The performance attracted the attention of Islamist militants, including so-called Islamic State, which urged supporters online to attack the event in the Red Sea coastal city of Jeddah.
In the West, however, women’s groups urged Ms Carey not to go ahead with her performance for fear her appearance would convey approval of Saudi Arabia’s repressive regime. The women’s activist group CodePink called on Ms Carey not to “artwash” Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses by appearing on stage there. “Doesn’t she know Saudi Arabia is one of the most repressive and murderous regimes on the planet?” the group said.
The murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last year focused global attention on the kingdom’s human rights abuses and intolerance of dissent. The CIA has concluded that the killing must have been ordered by the crown prince himself.
In June, Saudi women finally gained the right to drive under reforms engineered by Prince Mohammed. But many of the women who had campaigned for the right to drive had already been rounded up and imprisoned and it emerged recently that a number have been tortured and sexually assaulted in custody.
The women were also involved in efforts to end the oppressive male guardianship system, under which women need permission from a male relative to travel, study, obtain a passport and marry. The oppressive system was highlighted when a female Saudi teenager was granted asylum in Canada after fleeing the country to escape her allegedly abusive family.
Walid al-Hathoul, the brother of Loujain al-Hathloul, one of the most prominent jailed women’s rights activists, asked Ms Carey to call publicly for his sister’s release during her performance. Her sister, Alia, said it was because of Ms al-Hathloul’s pioneering work that Ms Carey was able to perform in the kingdom at all.
Karen Attiah, Mr Khashoggi’s editor at the Washington Post, expressed alarm at the performers’ decision to attend the event. “Is this what @MariahCarey @tiesto @duttypaul want to be a part of?” she tweeted. “Performing at the behest of the Saudi regime that kills and dismembers US-based journalists like #khashoggi, targets others abroad, and imprisons and tortures beautiful souls like @LoujainHathloul?”
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has also announced the conclusion of a controversial anti-corruption campaign begun by the crown prince when he locked up members of the kingdom’s political and business elites in Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton hotel.
The arrests spooked international investors that Saudi Arabia was seeking to lure in a bid to diversify its economy. The government claimed to have recovered £80 billion in settlements with the detainees before winding up the campaign.