A Finnish blogger and travel writer promoting tourism in Saudi Arabia has been sparking controversy among activists and Saudi Twitter users for the past few days.
Laura Alho, or as known on Twitter “Blue Abaya” [@blueabaya], arrived in Saudi Arabia 10 years ago, according to Arab News and launched her blog in 2010 to promote the Saudi tourism and heritage sites to the audiences from around the world.
In her blog “Blue Abaya — Explore Arabia”, Laura Alho promotes Saudi tourism to the outside world as she noticed a lack of channels telling people what to do and where to go when traveling to Saudi Arabia.
Among her posts, Laura has been recently dedicated space to promoting musical concerts and events taking place in Saudi Arabia as part of the Kingdom’s 2030 Vision.
What's unusual is that this includes promoting the so-called reforms implemented by Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
Earlier this week, a Saudi-American woman rights activist, Amani Al-Ahmadi, went to Twitter to question Laura Alho’s intentions behind boosting the Kingdom’s tourism in addition to promoting the Crown Prince, aka MBS, as a 'reformist.' This also leads to questioning whether Saudi Arabia is paying a non-Saudi to promote their country.
This comes in a time when MBS has been widely condemned internationally for human rights violations carried out against Saudis, particularly womens rights activists.
In her tweet, Ahmadi accused Alho of promoting the exclusive set of freedoms being offered to westerners in the ultra-conservative Kingdom while in fact ignoring the struggle of real Saudi women who have been punished for demanding their basic rights.
The story attracted the attention of Twitter users and had many Arab women rights activists jumping on it.
Yet, there have been opposing opinions who argued that Alho’s blog has been there for years now and refused any attempts to mix it with the Kingdom’s politics.
Meanwhile, posts criticizing Laura Alho accusing her of whitewashing the Saudi government violations of human rights have also attracted pro-Saudi trolls who launched attacks on the tweets critical of Saudi Arabia or even Laura Alho.
