Wijnaldum joined the Dutch national team last week, where several media were curious regarding his first year in the Saudi Arabian competition. Last summer he was acquired by El-Attifaq from Paris Saint-Germain for a multimillion-dollar sum.
‘Good football player, absurd statement’
“I like the living conditions even though I was skeptical at first,” he says in an interview with Today Inside. “Of course, every country has its good and bad things, we have that in the Netherlands too, so Saudi Arabia will undoubtedly have that too. I don’t see it, for me personally it’s not that bad. And when you talk regarding human rights : in the Netherlands you also have the benefits affair.”
“Good football player, but an absurd statement,” says Middle East expert Paul Aarts (affiliated with the University of Amsterdam and Clingendael) regarding the comparison with the benefits affair. “The systematic violation of human rights is ingrained in the Saudi Arabian system, in the Netherlands it is of a completely different order. In the Netherlands we have also had to deal with systematic discrimination, but that cannot be compared to Saudi Arabia.”
The reports from Amnesty International in Human Rights Watch don’t lie when it comes to human rights violations in the country. Aarts lists a number of events that are currently taking place. The first: there is hardly any freedom of expression. “If you criticize government policy at all seriously, in the broadest sense of the word, you will be arrested or go to jail. You might then face long prison sentences.”
Women and workers treated poorly
The second point is that the legal process is not always as we are used to here in the West. “It is not the case that a judge is completely independent and that you get a fair trial with a lawyer,” said Aarts.
A third point is the unequal treatment of, for example, foreign workers. “Workers from Asia in particular are treated in a very discriminatory way, especially girls in the household. Many reports have been written regarding this.”
And finally there is the position of women. “Although improvements have been made in the legal system in recent years, women are still legally disadvantaged.”
Improve the country’s image
Wijnaldum is not the least name in Dutch football, but to what extent can his statements contribute to normalizing human rights violations? “We know that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia wants to improve the image of his country through sport and tourism, an image that has not been good for a long time,” says Aarts. “Then it helps if well-known football players, pop stars, golfers or DJs come to Saudi Arabia and show the other side of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. That will undoubtedly improve the image.”
“The same goes for footballers like Messi and Ronaldo. What they say is only positive, exactly in the vein of Wijnaldum. It is not that they literally receive a gag order from the royal family, but they do understand that if they want to get a contract and collect money, there is censorship.”
That Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is working hard on a better image is evident from the video below: