Chess champion refuses to compete in Saudi Arabia
She’s protesting the country’s treatment of women
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Des Bieler.
Anna Muzychuk, 27, is the reigning women’s world champion in both rapid and blitz chess. In a recent Facebook post — which has been shared 64,000 times and has 18,000 comments — she said she “decided not to go to Saudi Arabia” because she did not want “to play by someone’s rules,” including being made to “wear [an] abaya,” the loose-fitting garment the country usually requires women to cover themselves with while in public.
Muzychuk also said she was opposed to being “accompanied getting outside,” and to being made to feel like “a secondary creature.”
By skipping the World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships, which began Tuesday in Riyadh and end Saturday, Muzychuk said she was aware that not only was she set to “lose two World Champion titles — one by one,” but also to pass up an opportunity to “earn more than I do in a dozen of events combined.” The $2 million prize fund for the championships, which have been named for Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, was declared by the World Chess Federation (FIDE) to be “almost 350% more than the previous event.”
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is leading an effort, called Vision 2030, to modernize aspects of his society, and in September the government announced that women will be allowed to drive, starting in mid-2018. However, women in Saudi Arabia still need the permission of male guardians to marry, get divorced, attain employment, travel or have elective surgery (per CNN), and mixing with men in public places is still largely forbidden.
FIDE announced in November that “there will be no need to wear a hijab or abaya during the games, this will be a first for any sporting event in Saudi Arabia.”
Nevertheless, neither Muzychuk nor her younger sister Mariya, a former world champion in her own right, are competing at the championships.
Hikaru Nakamura, the U.S.’s top-ranked rapid and blitz chess player, is also skipping the event. “To organize a chess tournament in a country where basic human rights aren’t valued is horrible,” Nakamura said in a November tweet. “Chess is a game where all different sorts of people can come together, not a game in which people are divided because of their religion or country of origin.”
