{"id":481614,"date":"2019-01-31T11:22:48","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T18:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=787538"},"modified":"2019-01-31T11:22:48","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T18:22:48","slug":"mariah-carey-to-perform-in-saudi-arabia-despite-calls-for-boycott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/mariah-carey-to-perform-in-saudi-arabia-despite-calls-for-boycott\/","title":{"rendered":"Mariah Carey to Perform in Saudi Arabia Despite Calls for Boycott"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mariah Carey<\/a> plans to make her live debut in Saudi Arabia on Thursday, January 31st, dismissing calls to cancel her concert as a symbolic show of support for the detained women\u2019s rights activists and the victims of Saudi Arabia\u2019s war on Yemen.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs the first female international artist to perform in Saudi Arabia, Mariah recognizes the cultural significance of this event and will continue to support global efforts towards equality for all,\u201d the singer\u2019s publicists wrote in a statement to The Associated Press<\/em><\/a>. They added, \u201c[When] presented with the offer to perform for an international and mixed gender audience in Saudi Arabia, Mariah accepted the opportunity as a positive step towards the dissolution of gender segregation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Carey, who is booked as part of a bill that also includes\u00a0Sean Paul and Tiesto, is among the most famous artists booked in Saudia Arabia since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman began relaxing the country\u2019s ultra-conservative restrictions on entertainment and pop culture. In December, the Black Eyed Peas, Enrique Iglesias and David Guetta all performed at a Formula-E car race in Riyadh.
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Activists have criticized the crown prince\u2019s cultural push as a distraction from Saudi Arabia\u2019s history of human rights abuses including the murder of Washington Post<\/em> columnist (and vocal Saudi critic) Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. (While the U.S. Senate and CIA \u2014 though, notably, not President Trump \u2014 have concluded that the crown prince ordered agents to kill the journalist<\/a>, Saudi Arabia has denied his involvement.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDoesn\u2019t she know Saudi Arabia is one of the most repressive and murderous regimes on the planet?\u201d Code Pink, the grassroots organization known for its anti-war activism, wrote in a statement<\/a> calling for Carey and the others to cancel the January 31st show. \u201cDoesn\u2019t she know that women fighting for their rights are tortured in Saudi prisons? Doesn\u2019t she know that Saudi Arabia is bombing school children in Yemen?\u201d<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia\u2019s pattern of silencing dissenters has been widely documented, with reports last year that several of the country\u2019s most prominent women\u2019s rights activists had been jailed or forced into exile<\/a> even as the kingdom began to publicly embrace some reform measures, like ending its ban on women drivers. The nonprofit group Human Rights Watch reported last year<\/a> that some of the detained activists were being physically tortured in prison.<\/p>\n

In an op-ed<\/a> published today by CNN, the brother of jailed activist\u00a0Loujain al-Hathloul alleged that she has been \u201cregularly whipped, beaten, electrocuted and sexually harassed in a basement she called the \u2018palace of terror.’\u201d He added: \u201cNow that I told you the story of my sister, will Mariah Carey call for her release on stage? Will my voice be heard?\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mariah Carey plans to make her live debut in Saudi Arabia on Thursday, January 31st, dismissing calls to cancel her concert as a symbolic show of support for the detained women\u2019s rights activists and the victims of Saudi Arabia\u2019s war on Yemen. \u201cAs the first female international artist to perform in Saudi Arabia, Mariah recognizes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-481614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-13 10:39:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}