Catherine Bennett at the Guardian asks some inconvenient questions about Saudi Arabia and its role as host of the Women’s Tennis Association finals.

She cites Manahel al-Otaibi, a 29-year-old fitness instructor and women’s rights activist.

[T]here could hardly have been a more convenient time for human rights organisations to report, as they did last week, that al-Otaibi whose circumstances were for months unknown, is serving 11 years in prison for the “terrorist” offences of wearing “indecent clothes” (ie, not an abaya) and supporting women’s rights. Her sister, Fouz al-Otaibi, fled the country in 2022 to avoid similar persecution. Fouz tweeted last week: “Why have my rights become terrorism, and why is the world silent?”

11 years in prison. For not wearing a black tent.

Had the scale of this injustice emerged earlier it could have cast a shadow over the unopposed election in March of a Saudi, Dr Abdulaziz Alwasil, as chair of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, a title reflecting his country’s attractive new image as a champion of women’s rights…“Is the international community’s commitment so shallow that no better champion could be found,” the academic Maryam Aldossari wrote at the time, “or was Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada, the Taliban’s leader, simply unavailable for the role?”

…

In a joint article (“We did not help build women’s tennis for it to be exploited by Saudi Arabia”) for the Washington Post, the tennis champions Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova had indeed argued that the Saudi deal negotiated by WTA’s leader, Steve Simon, would represent a “significant regression”. The WTA’s values, they explained, “sit in stark contrast to those of the proposed host”.

Defending her country, Princess Reema took the opportunity to reproach Evert and Navratilova for deficient feminism.

On the one hand it’s our refusal to agree that some men are women, on the other hand it’s our refusal to agree that Saudi Arabia has a fine record on women’s rights. The two meet in the middle and hey presto feminist women are wrong about everything.

As with Saudi football and golfing acquisitions, the latest sportswashing confirms that you can’t overestimate the willingness of humane people who love sport not to hold evidence of savage repression against a truly generous despot. All the more so in female sport given extensive male readiness – as witnessed with David Cameron’s business overtures in Saudi Arabia, Tobias Elwood’s enthusiasm for the Taliban – to exclude the theocratic oppression of entire female populations from the category of serious human rights abuse.

Women’s rights are a luxury. Luxuries must be dispensed with in an emergency. There is always an emergency.

As with Saudi football and golfing acquisitions, the latest sportswashing confirms that you can’t overestimate the willingness of humane people who love sport not to hold evidence of savage repression against a truly generous despot. All the more so in female sport given extensive male readiness – as witnessed with David Cameron’s business overtures in Saudi Arabia, Tobias Elwood’s enthusiasm for the Taliban – to exclude the theocratic oppression of entire female populations from the category of serious human rights abuse.

Yeah, sorry, luxury – excuse me, I have a plane to catch.