Should climbers be going to a festival in Saudi Arabia?

Came across this article and had some thoughts. It seems the article and the festival are whole heartedly in support of going climbing there, and I think there should be more consideration by the publishers before just parroting what looks a lot like a sterilized advertisement from the Saudi government. There's a short mention in the article about being concerned about womens rights in the country, but quickly brushes it away by saying there were lots of female climbers there, and something about it defying negative preconceptions from western media. It seems to me that this event was a propaganda peice for their government trying to show off to western climbers, while the rest of the country is likely quite different that the esperience at this insulated festival. I'm not the most educated on the topic so I'd love to be corrected by someone more knowledgeable, but this article makes it seem like the people involved brush away the injustices from the Saudi government much too easily.

If they are paying a fraction of what those LIV golf players are making I'd sign up to go develop. Plus the climbers got dinner buffets! Prolly amazing Falafel. 

Yea reading that feels... not great. On the one hand, the actions of a government shouldn't necessarily reflect on its citizens, and in this case on a climbing community. On the other hand, there's lots of precedent of sport events, festivals, and communities being funded by governments trying to paint over the blood on their hands. In totalitarian states like Saudi, things generally lean towards the latter, and the global community shouldn't support it. For example, climbing comps in Russia are largely not happening any more because of the Ukraine invasion. Writing about how nice Saudi is to visit and climb in while their government bombs children in Yemen seems tone deaf.

Should climbers be burning Saudi oil?

Dylan Thomas TX wrote:

If they are paying a fraction of what those LIV golf players are making I'd sign up to go develop. Plus the climbers got dinner buffets! Prolly amazing Falafel. 

I'd do it for room, board and an small allowance. I think the experience would pay for itself.

I see this as an opportunity to bring cultures together for better understanding of one another, through climbing and development and future relations by way of encounter.

Of course, I'm just a normal Joe climber American, not one of the "elites" who run governments, and I most often avoid politics, but this can go both directions, in that the better parts of our two societies can shine through and rub off and educate the other. Or not, what do I know, I just put up routes on rock and want some Falafel, whatever that is.

No, we shouldn't be burning Saudi oil, but that's a little harder to avoid than going there in person to give them your money and bring international attention.  If you're concerned about our relations with this authoritarian monarchy, I'd encourage you to join the campaign to push Biden NOT to meet with MBS, who is a person I can't say enough bad things about.  He certainly hasn't earned our efforts to prop up his legitimacy.  I'm going to stop there, before I get mad.  

And in response to Nathan, I hear you, and I agree that cultural exchange is really valuable, but in this case, the country IS the Saudi royal family and their brutal policies.  Making a connection with some Saudi climbers would be nice, but going there gives Western prestige to a nasty dictatorship.  Plus, it doesn't help that much to get regular people there to like us--they have no real power to change their own society.  Maybe set up a scholarship to bring those people somewhere else (I hear good things about the climbing in Jordan, for instance).  

Greg Kosinski wrote:

Came across this article and had some thoughts. It seems the article and the festival are whole heartedly in support of going climbing there, and I think there should be more consideration by the publishers before just parroting what looks a lot like a sterilized advertisement from the Saudi government. There's a short mention in the article about being concerned about womens rights in the country, but quickly brushes it away by saying there were lots of female climbers there, and something about it defying negative preconceptions from western media. It seems to me that this event was a propaganda peice for their government trying to show off to western climbers, while the rest of the country is likely quite different that the esperience at this insulated festival. I'm not the most educated on the topic so I'd love to be corrected by someone more knowledgeable, but this article makes it seem like the people involved brush away the injustices from the Saudi government much too easily.

If it helps lower gas prices I'm all for it.

John Badila wrote:

And in response to Nathan, I hear you, and I agree that cultural exchange is really valuable, but in this case, the country IS the Saudi royal family and their brutal policies.  Making a connection with some Saudi climbers would be nice, but going there gives Western prestige to a nasty dictatorship.  Plus, it doesn't help that much to get regular people there to like us--they have no real power to change their own society.  Maybe set up a scholarship to bring those people somewhere else (I hear good things about the climbing in Jordan, for instance).  

One more thing I'd like to add is I'm very skeptical that the local climbers are representative of most of the Saudi people. When the government seems to be sportswashing like this I can't imagine just anyone would get to go there, especially with the restrictions they place on the rest of the population. Their whole system of male guardianship would prevent any woman coming of her own accord without special permission.

The rock looks great, but remember that for Saudis. non-Muslims are infidels. They only barely tolerate Westerner's existence. I have heard many, many stories from engineer friends of mine who worked in Saudi Arabia and the Saudis treated them like second class citizens. Example - at the lunch line, Saudis cutting in line and pushing Westerners out of the way. Oh, and booze of any kind is going to be very hard to find unless you're at an ex-patriate compound. Yeah, and another poster commented on how women are treated there. 

And don't forget the "Death by lopping off your head" letter you are required to sign before entering the country. Oh, and all the rights and freedoms we enjoy in the West. Yeah, you don't have those there.

On the plus side, at least it's cooler in Jeddah now than it is in my particular corner of the US.

People who want to go should go there, and people who do not want to go should not go there.
That is my perception how this should be decided in a free society like the US.
Am I missing anything?

Will C wrote:

This is the type of virtue signaling that really annoys me. Yes, SA is a repressive, backwards, shit sandwich of a nation. Everyone on earth has known that for a while now. Everyone knows that sporting events are one of the main PR avenues for despots, and always have been. Do the Berlin or Sochi Olympics ring a bell? Have you heard of Formula1? Everyone knows MBS slaughtered his rivals for the crown and also Jamal Khashoggi in cold blood. This is nothing new and it's not going to stop, either. Governments and corporations, and frankly most people, don't care. Sportswashing is, and always will be, a staple of geopolitics. Events like this will still be held, and people will still go, regardless of their espoused views on say, womens or LGBT rights.

You're just pissing into the wind, here.

Everyone is pissing in the wind here, that's the point of the forums. 

It might not be much, but I think individual choices can make a difference, especially the choice by the magazine to essentially write a glowing review of the country. Some people still will go regardless of what atrocities are occuring, but many other people will choose not to go based on their beliefs. The actions of individual climbers might not make much of a difference, but ignoring the issues of our world definitely won't make anything better.

Yury wrote:

People who want to go should go there, and people who do not want to go should not go there.
That is my perception how this should be decided in a free society like the US.
Am I missing anything?

I dunno, I think people should think about the consequences of their actions for people besides themselves, even people they'll never meet. It's not as simple as if it looks fun go do it. I think there can be a discussion about whether it is right or not, and I'm biased toward one side, but I think it's more nuanced than "if you want to do it, go for it" in most situations in life. "Can" do something is different from "should" do it

I haven't ever been to Saudi Arabia, so I'd be basing my opinion of the government, the culture as a whole, and every individual living there off of silly "news" articles and second-hand stories. But I respect everyone here being significantly more well traveled than I.  I can't say folk's insights into the minds of every Saudi jive with the few Saudis I've hung out with elsewhere, but I suspect they become an oppressive monolith when they're in-country, right?

This is a difficult topic, but I basically agree with Yuri on this, it is a decision for individuals to make based upon their own values. Some may weigh the pros and cons before making a decision, while others will just jump at an opportunity. I am not for a second condoning the Saudi government and it’s oppressive rule, and not trying to make a direct equivalence, but there are certainly many here in the US who make a strong case that they have been systematically oppressed by at least important elements of our government and society in general. So, to show our solidarity, should we refuse to climb here?  I am not being facetious, I do believe that many in this country have been oppressed, but don’t believe that whether or not I climb, even if I go to  a climbing festival in a ‘red state’ such as at the RRG, will have any impact on their struggle. Yeah, this is different than attending a government endorsed festival in SA, but only in degree.

Disclaimer: In the 70s , I participated as a host climber at the Gunks during the first visit of Soviet ( as it was then —and an oppressive dictatorship) climbers to the US. A few years later I was an AAC representative to Poland ( then a Soviet satellite nation, though trying to assert it’s independence through the Solidarity movement, soon to be ( temporarily) put down forcibly  by the Soviet-controlled government—something we all knew at the time to be inevitable) as part of an alternating year climbing exchange program. The trip also included a few day, private, stop to climb in Dresden, East Germany, an even more heavily oppressed Soviet satellite. I was aware of the ‘underlying circumstances’ of each of these experiences and did my own cost/benefit calculations as I saw them at the time.  They were, and remain, among the best and most memorable experiences of my life. I got to meet, climb with, talk to, exchange ideas and experiences with human beings from those countries, to pget a true feeling of what they were like as individuals and what their day-to-day lives were like—and they of mine. I have no regrets and definitely don’t believe I helped the Soviet regime survive, or if I did, I clearly did a very poor job of it.

That doesn’t mean that I’d go to Saudi now. Different circumstances, different personal calculation.

Most people would probably object to international climbers making a highly publicized trip to climb in Russia at the invitation of the government right now, given the war in Ukraine.

The scale of atrocities and deaths that Saudi Arabia has perpetrated in Yemen dwarf those caused by the Russia-Ukraine war by an order of magnitude or more. Of course we don't hear about it nearly as much in the media as it is rather inconvenient for US news sources to report on genocide-level abuses by a key US ally. I wont say they should have or should not have gone, but I thought it would be an illuminating comparison.

To those commenting about the Saudi people-

I’ve been to Saudi Arabia and know quite a few Saudis very well. Saudis, like all people, are generally good people. They think, feel, and behave, fairly similarly to you and I. I’ve met zero people who don’t believe in women’s rights, zero people who don’t believe in LGBTQ rights, and zero people who are “religious extremists”. They are pretty much in line with the average American. 

Imagine if the world judged you, as an individual, from a thousand miles away based on a handful of stories in the news. If you prefer somebody to get to know you before making a judgement, I hope you can extend that grace to a fellow human. 

LIV Climbing. 

Imagine you were from western Europe.  Would you avoid attending, for example, the Yosemite Facelift because of the US government's openly acknowledged extrajudicial killings in foreign lands, ghastly incarceration rate, excessive carbon emissions, or indifference towards gun violence?  

I'm sure there are some people who would indeed avoid visiting for such reasons, but I don't think that will change any of those things.

Money is power. The sports washing is just to make them feel better about themselves. Traveling overseas to go to a climbing festival is less supportive than buying gas. SA is powerful because they have money not because 100 nobody’s showed up to go rock climbing.

my guess is that jimmy chin will make a really nice, glossy documentary of the whole thing for imax.

then a year or so later he will write a long-winded article chiding climbers about taking climbing vacations there.

I went to SA for work about 10 years ago. If I were asked to go again I would put Atheist on my visa application (which would get it denied). 

I could not imagine going there to climb.