Abdullah Al-Howaiti was fourteen years old when he was arrested by the Saudi authorities in 2017. In police captivity, per multiple reports, he was subjected to beatings and torture. He was sixteen years old in 2019, when the Saudi Criminal court sentenced him to death by beheading. He still awaits that fate today.
In March, Saudi Arabia executed 81 men in a single day. Many of their “confessions” – all of them for crimes less than murder – had been extracted, according to international observers – by way of torture. If one was to just keep listing Saudi Arabia’s crimes against its own people, the article would never get to the point. And the point, as you might have gathered from the headline, is Padraig Harrington:
Looking at some of the replies, I’m trying to explain why this has happened. It’s hard to overcome the financial/business side of life when you are representing a group with many different backgrounds and morals. My own country sells military technology to Saudi Arabia. So many…
— Padraig Harrington (@padraig_h) June 6, 2023
There are a few things to say about Padraig Harrington’s tweet above: First, it simply isn’t true that Ireland “locked up unmarried mothers until 1996”.
In point of fact, “Ireland” never locked up unmarried mothers at all. Irish people may have treated their daughters with uncommon cruelty, but being an unmarried mother was never, at any stage, a criminal offence in this country or something that led the state to “lock you up”. So that is just false.
In any case, Padraig’s concern for the unmarried mothers of several decades past is conveniently timed, coming as it does at a time when he and other PGA players may well be set to begin trousering the oil wealth of the Saudi Kingdom. One might be forgiven for thinking that his concerns, sending that tweet, were not to express outrage on behalf of Ireland’s unmarried mothers, but to use them as a sort of meat shield for his own interests. Yes it’s bad what they do in Saudi Arabia, but look what ye did to unmarried mothers, and leave me alone.
For another thing, the argument Harrington is making does not stand up: The implication seems to be that it was engagement with the world which finally freed the unmarried mothers of Ireland from their chains, and that as a consequence we should see Saudi involvement in sport as a mechanism through which Saudi society might be liberalised. Padraig Harrington hits a golf ball in South Carolina, and a Judge goes easy on a gay man in Jeddah. That sort of thing. In this way, we are invited to see those pocketing great wads of Saudi cash as almost the opposition to the Saudi regime, changing it from within.
The problem is that it’s bull.
There’s a fair argument to be made that sport has very little impact on human rights: The Russian Federation, for example, has been functionally banned from sending athletes to sporting events for several years now. Even in a game as civilised as Chess, Russian players – if they are permitted to compete – must play under an international flag, and are not permitted to represent their country. There is, I would argue, little evidence that these sporting sanctions on Russia have brought about some kind of rising liberal tide in the country. The argument that sport can change the domestic politics of a country strikes me as more based on wishful thinking than it is on hard evidence.
What’s more, there’s not really much a professional golfer can do in this situation. It’s not as if Harrington, or anyone else on the PGA tour, negotiated the merger deal. So why does he feel the need to defend it at all? “This revolts me but there’s not much I can do” is a statement that has the benefit of being simultaneously true, and less offensive than the one that Harrington actually chose. Heck, if he really wants to make a point, he can appear in a rainbow-bedecked outfit to celebrate pride month next time he tees off. I suspect he will not.
Harrington’s problem, it strikes me, isn’t really a practical one: He will keep playing golf and earning money for it because he is good at golf. His problem isn’t really an image one, either: Nobody rational will blame individual golfers for the Saudis buying out the PGA tour. Nobody sane will say “this is Padraig Harrington’s fault and he must answer for it”.
His problem, it seems to me, is more one of self-image. He needed to let it be known that he disapproved of the Saudi deal, and come up with some kind of rationale for still playing anyway. What he arrived at was “sure they’re not much worse than Ireland, really”. He can be forgiven, because he is not a professional communicator. But it should be noted for the record that his comparison was both shameful, and disgraceful.
By the way, I don’t know how much good it will do, but there’s a petition here to ask the Saudis not to execute the child mentioned above that they sentenced to death. Consider signing it.