A panel of United Nations human rights experts published a letter this week condemning Saudi Arabia for sentencing multiple indigenous tribesmen to death on vague “terrorism” charges after opposing the displacement of their tribes from the country’s northwest, where Riyadh is planning the construction of an allegedly revolutionary “megacity.”
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is spearheading the effort to build “Neom,” a proposed “zero-carbon” city and luxury tourism destination on the northern banks of the Red Sea. Neom currently consists of four distinct projects, the most ambitious of which, “The Line,” is a 106-mile-long skyscraper the Saudi government claims will comfortably house as many as five million people:
Neom organizers claim the city will also include a Dubai-esque luxury island, Sindalah; Oxagon, a “floating” Silicon Valley-esque innovation community; and Trojena, a ski resort and wellness center for music festivals and yoga retreats. They have also hinted that Saudi Arabia’s repressive interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law, would not apply in the city, teasing the establishment of alcohol-serving establishments and featuring women without hijabs in its promotional material.
Neom is the flagship project of the MBS-led “Vision 2030,” the Saudi government’s holistic plan to diversify its economy away from oil, making it less vulnerable to potential economic decline should the world begin to adopt “green” energy alternatives on a mass scale.
As of January, Neom was far from complete. A video published by the Saudi government showed construction teams beginning to build the “green” energy infrastructure necessary to power the project but little to no progress at Oxagon or The Line. Sindalah, the first project expected to open next year, appears closer to completion.
To get to this stage, the Neom project required the forced displacement of the people living on the land the Saudi government hopes to transform into its most advanced city. The Howeitat tribe, a community indigenous to Saudi Arabia and Jordan, has lived on that land for centuries. The Qatari outlet Al Jazeera reported in 2020 that about 20,000 Howeitat people faced forced displacement to make room for Neom.
“Mohammed Bin Salman [MBS] has decided to place this project in the northwest corner of Saudi Arabia – the mainstay of the al-Huwaitat tribe,” Professor Dawn Chatty told Al Jazeera at the time. “But it’s not even trying to settle the tribe, it’s pretending they don’t exist. This is typical of the way Mohammed Bin Salman operates.”
“For the Huwaitat tribe, Neom is being built on our blood, on our bones,” Howaitat activist Alia Hayel Aboutiyah al-Huwaiti told the Guardian in 2020. “It’s definitely not for the people already living there! It’s for tourists, people with money. But not for the original people living there.”
The U.N. experts, an advisory panel adjacent to the U.N.’s most notorious haven for dictatorships, the Human Rights Council, published a letter on Wednesday detailing with “alarm” Riyadh’s response to ongoing protests from members of the Howeitat community attempting to continue to live on their land. In a press release on Wednesday, the U.N. noted that Saudi authorities were working to displace at least three villages to make room for the Neom project and detailed the arrests, convictions, and sentences facing multiple men in the tribe:
Mr Shadly Ahmad Mahmoud Abou Taqiqa al-Huwaiti, Mr Ibrahim Salih Ahmad Abou Khalil al-Huwaiti and Mr Atallah Moussa Mohammed al-Huwaiti were reportedly sentenced to death on 5 August 2022, and their sentences were upheld by the Specialised Criminal Court of Appeal on 23 January 2023. Three other members of the Howeitat tribe were sentenced to severe prison terms: Mr Abdelnasser Ahmad Mahmoud Abou Taqiqa al-Huwaiti was sentenced to 27 years; Mr Mahmoud Ahmad Mahmoud Abou Taqiqa al-Huwaiti was sentenced to 35 years; and Mr Abdullah Dakhilallah al-Huwaiti was sentenced to 50 years.
“Despite being charged with terrorism, they were reportedly arrested for resisting forced evictions in the name of the NEOM project and the construction of a 170km linear city called The Line,” the letter by the experts read. “Under international law, States that have not yet abolished the death penalty may only impose it for the ‘most serious crimes’, involving intentional killing. We do not believe the actions in question meet this threshold.”
The experts also noted reports that the individuals imprisoned had been tortured and urged the Saudi government to investigate the allegations. Finally, the expert panel pressured “foreign investors” interested in working with the Neom project “to ensure that they are not causing or contributing to, and are not directly linked to serious human rights abuses.”
The Saudi human rights NGO ALQST initially revealed the death sentences in October; at the time, Neom organizers claimed The Line would be a mere 75 miles long.
“On 23 May 2022, Shadli [al-Huwaitat] went on hunger strike in protest against ill-treatment and being placed in solitary confinement, and after two weeks the Dhahban Prison administration inserted a tube into his stomach to force-feed him, a form of torture,” ALQST asserted at the time.
The sentences followed the killing of another Howeitat opponent to Neom, Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, who had published multiple videos on Youtube condemning the forced removal of civilians to make way for luxury amenities. Saudi special forces reportedly shot al-Huwaiti dead in 2020 for his advocacy; the Saudi government never addressed the death.
Human rights concerns have done little to deter foreign investors from Neom. In November, MBS heavily promoted Neom to South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol during a visit to Seoul and signed a memorandum of understanding with Hyundai for the construction of a Neom railroad project. Yoon appeared positive towards the project, suggesting a significant Korean role in its development.
“Some people say the idea of the NEOM city project is too utopian and doubt whether it can be really established. But it’s one of the projects that Prince (Mohammed) is pushing hard so that he will try to have (the NEOM project) running to some extent,” Hankuk University Middle Eastern researcher Paik Seung-hoon told the Associated Press last year.
The Mideast television network MBC announced the debut of a reality show, Million Dollar Land, this week filmed in what is expected to one day be Neom. The show, which debuted on Wednesday, is a physical challenge competition among 100 Arab participants for a million-dollar prize. It is expected to heavily feature the desert and seaside landscapes that Saudi Arabia hopes to use to attract investors and tourists to the destination – and to normalize Neom, a controversial project from its outset.
https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2023/05/05/u-n-experts-condemn-saudi-arabia-planned-executions-tribesmen-megacity-neom/
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