Less than a year after signing with Paris Saint-Germain – one of Qatar’s most prominent sportswashing projects – Lionel Messi is now the face of yet another oppressive Middle Eastern monarchy.
The Argentinian was unveiled as the latest tourism ambassador for Saudi Arabia during a trip to Jeddah, a port city along the Red Sea, on Monday.
“This is not his first visit to the kingdom and it will not be the last,” said Ahmed al-Khateeb, the kingdom’s minister of tourism, in a tweet with images of Messi being welcomed at King Abdulaziz International Airport.
Messi, who was accompanied by his Argentina and PSG teammate Leandro Paredes, later posted a picture of himself relaxing on a yacht while watching the sunset. “Discovering the Red Sea #VisitSaudi,” read the caption on the post, which was marked as a “paid partnership” with Visit Saudi, a subsidiary of the Saudi Tourism Authority.
Messi was later accompanied by Princess Haifa Al-Saud, assistant minister of tourism, as they toured various parts of old Jeddah. “I am glad that he was mesmerized by its essence, heritage and beauty,” Princess Haifa later wrote on Twitter.
The first thing to point out is that Messi does not need to take whatever incredibly large sum Saudi Arabia has thrown his way. Last year alone he made $122m through salary and sponsorship, making him the second-highest paid athlete in the world behind LeBron James. Simply put, Messi has enough money that his future grandchildren won’t need to work a day in their lives. He could have politely declined the Saudi offer and still lived out a very comfortable retirement. And, yet, unless Messi has a hitherto undisclosed passion for spreading the word about Saudi Arabia’s undiscovered cultural highlights, this is all about greed. And the effects will be toxic.
By accepting a role as Saudi Arabia’s tourism ambassador, Messi has effectively aligned himself with a regime linked to countless human rights abuses, including the infamous assassination of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, its devastating war in Yemen that has caused a humanitarian catastrophe, and its crackdown on intellectuals, LGBTI+ people, reformers, and women’s rights activists.
Messi’s trip to Jeddah also underscores how the kingdom continues to use sports to beautify its public image. This process is known as sportswashing, a term popularized by Amnesty International to describe the use of sports by oppressive governments to legitimize their regimes and distract from their human rights abuses.
Ahead of Messi’s latest trip to Saudi, he was urged by families of political prisoners in the kingdom to refuse offers to become the face of Saudi tourism. Their letter, which was organized by human rights advocacy body Grant Liberty, noted that “the Saudi regime wants to use you to launder its reputation.”
“If you say ‘yes’ to Visit Saudi you are in effect saying yes to all the human rights abuses that take place today in modern Saudi Arabia,” read the letter, which was first published in February 2021….
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