Countries are allowed to create and enforce laws as they see fit, however, with Formula One become more welcoming of driver opinions and advocacy, recent news from Saudi Arabia should be sounding alarms throughout the sport–and the world.
In 2021, the Saudi Arabia Special Criminal Court, which acts as its counterterrorism tribunal, sentenced Salma al-Shehab to prison for six years for Tweets that she either posted or retweeted which supported Saudi dissidents. She immediately appealed the sentence, and a year later, the appeals court increased her sentence to 35 years, saying that the previous six-year sentence didn’t achieve “restraint and deterrence.”
The Saudi government hasn’t specified which Tweets prompted the arrest to begin with.
Salma al-Shehab–a mother of two–was a PhD candidate studying at the School of Medicine at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom in 2021, and was arrested just days before returning to school. Among the charges she was convicted of were “providing support to those who seek to disrupt public order, undermine the security of the society, and the stability of the state by following and retweeting” and “supporting those to incite terrorism.”
Saudi Arabia has an extensive list of laws that act to protect its citizens from cyber crimes. And while social media is legal, there’s extensive censorship, and the Kingdom has placed limits on freedoms of speech. According to watchdog groups, since 2011, Saudi Arabia has used secret courts to prosecute dissidents that are allegedly set up under the veil of counterterrorism. While Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been slightly more progressive than his predecessors (especially towards women’s autonomy) according to trends, it’s been at the expense of tightened punishment towards those who disagree with the sentiments of the Kingdom.
In 2019, A-list celebrities were enlisted by the Saudi government to attend the MDL Beast Festival in Riyadh. While one attendee said it “felt like a cultural shift,” the festival and celebrity endorsements angered and disturbed global activists. Not much has been said from celebrities who attended since the event took place, but with Formula One adding the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in Jeddah to the calendar in 2021, bin Salman augmented some of the morality and modesty rules and even ended compulsory hijab.
When there’s money to be made in the global circus that is Formula One and from Westerners, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see nationals attempt to bend the rules, or inspire Westerners to drive change.
Interestingly enough, I conducted a search on Lewis Hamilton’s Twitter and there were no results containing the words “Saudi Arabia,” “hijab,” “Saudi women,” Saudi human rights,” or any other string of words that could put one of motorsports’ most outspoken activists under the Saudi microscope. There are, however, results that pop up from “human rights” and “racism,” but those are limited to global civil rights events of 2020. This makes you wonder if the FIA and Formula One have already warned drivers and personnel about the potential legal and international security implications they could be subject to in these countries for their opinions on human rights and freedom of speech. My sources have told me that Formula One has a team dedicated to international security and terrorism analysis, but I wonder if monitoring social media accounts and creating policy that could possibly eliminate the potential for these arrests is within their operations scope.
While Formula One and the FIA have created agreements with the Saudi government on appropriate dress and conduct for personnel, perhaps, more must be done to increase fan awareness, too. It’s one thing for a driver or social media team to be briefed on the legal consequences for speaking out against certain governments for their laws, but it’s quite another for a fan. Imagine being new to the sport and going to a race and customs conducts a social media scan of the individual who is waiting to enter the country, only to find posts slamming that government over a variety of issues. That would become an international crisis, and with countries already arresting foreign visitors for political leverage, Formula One and the FIA needs to be exercising every tool in their collective arsenal to better prepare fans, media, contractors, etc.., on the quickly changing political landscape.
What happened to American women’s basketball player, Brittney Griner, in Russia should already be an international wake-up call. It really makes you wonder if Formula One continued its contract with the organizers for the Sochi Grand Prix, would Russian president Vladimir Putin have arrested fans or personnel for making anti-war sentiments and held them as political prisoners of war.
Dissent is incredibly important for human rights advocacy, but understanding how countries punish or suppress personal opinions is just as important. As globalism continues to expand, sports leagues owe it to fans to be as transparent as possible in order to avoid global crises.
