Human Rights Organizations Address F1 Sportswashing in Joint Letters to Drivers
On 24 March 2022, ADHRB and nine other human rights organizations issued joint letters to four Formula 1 (F1) drivers – George Russell, George Russell, Max Verstappen, and Sebastian Vettel – ahead of the F1 race in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The groups expressed their concern for F1’s complicity in the Saudi government’s use of the event as means to ‘sportswash’ its egregious human rights violations, which includes the recent execution of 81 people on March 12th, the largest mass execution in the country’s history.
Saudi Arabia has carried out several mass executions in recent years. The March 12th mass execution is the most recent demonstration of the kingdom’s deeply flawed justice system and example of the monarchy’s violent hold on power. According to the joint letter, of the 81 people executed, more than 50 percent were killed for their participation in pro-democracy protests and over 70 percent were executed for nonlethal offenses. These statistics rare part of a dark reality, the Saudi state suppresses dissent by killing its critics, through sham trials marred built on due process violations and securing convictions from false confessions extracted under coercion and torture. Despite widespread international condemnation following the announcement of the mass execution, executions have continued a nearly daily basis; 16 more people were executed in the two weeks between the mass execution and the release of the joint letters. Alarmingly, there have already been more in executions in 2022 than in the two previous years combined.
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