A former Royal military colonel and former intelligence officer claimed on Wednesday that the Saudi government had ordered troops to kill indigenous people who opposed expulsion on the land Riyadh hopes will transform into the state-of-the-art “megacity” Neom.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is regarded as the de facto ruler of the nation, claimed in discussions that Neom aspires to” engage with Miami” to host global music festivals, sports competitions, and provide the country’s riches with exclusive luxury hotel options. Additionally, the Saudi government wants to build “green” communities where government-controlled railways will be the only form of transportation that is legally accessible, and where fossil fuels play a minor role.
Near Tabuk province, in the northwest of Saudi Arabia, is where Neom construction is now being carried out, according to the government of Tabuk province. Mohammed al Salman, better known as MBS, asserts that the Saudi authorities can create a completely new city it with little disruption to locals because the desert landscape that is “empty.” In fact, however, the property is populated by members of the old, typically nomadic Huwaitat clan. The Neom job could eventually force as many as 20 000 Huwaitats to leave their area. The Royal government’s own projections of displacement, according to the BBC, on Wednesday, included about 6, 000 people from the area.
” For the Huwaitat community, Neom is being built on our body, on our legs”, Huwaitat advocate Alia Hayel Aboutiyah al- Huwaiti , told , the , Guardian , in 2020. It’s undoubtedly not for the residents who currently reside it! It’s for visitors, people with money. However, they were not the original inhabitants that.
In a report released on Wednesday, Col. Rabih Alenezi claimed that Arabian military forces had assigned him with the task of removing Huwaitat residents from Neom-designated areas in 2020. Alenezi claimed that in that month, he was given a directive to replace the residents of the village of al- Khuraybah, which called them “rebels.”
” Whoever continues to resist]eviction ] should be killed, so it licensed the use of lethal force against whoever stayed in their home”, Alenezi recalled the order commanding.
The former captain is now in captivity in the United Kingdom, where he spoke to the national journalist. Al- Khuraybah, the BBC noted, appears to no more exist, according to satellite photos. According to the reports of violent repression of Huwaitat people at the time, Alenzi’s claim that he was ordered to buy the shooting of those who resist even aligns with Alenzi’s assertion. At the time, Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, who had attempted to organize Huwaitat citizens against the Saudi government to stop the Neom deflections, was the target of at least one dying by Saudi forces.
Huwaiti reportedly refused to cooperate with an official group sent to examine his house after being shot dead in his house in 2020. Immediately before his death, Huwaiti published several videos on Youtube denouncing the deformations.
” They have begun the process of removing individuals, beginning with studying properties with the goal of removing individuals and deporting them from their property”, he , narrated, according to a language by the , Guardian at the time. ” They arrested anyone who said they’re against deportation, they do n’t want to leave, they want to remain]in ] their homes, that they do n’t want money”.
Watch the video:
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Following Huwaiti’s death, Saudi authorities claimed that he had violently engaged officers, leaving them with no choice but to shoot him.
About 40 other people were detained for resisting displacement, according to human rights organizations and experts with UN membership, some of whom are currently on death row. In May 2023, a group of U.N. experts urged the Saudi government to spend some leisure time.
The experts wrote in the letter that they were detained for allegedly resisting forced evictions in the name of the NEOM project and the construction of a 170km linear city called The Line despite being charged with terrorism. States that have not yet abolished the death penalty may only impose it on the “most serious crimes” that involve intentional killing, according to international law. We do n’t think the actions we’ve seen pass this standard.
The Saudi government declined to comment on the report, and Alenezi and other Saudi officials were unable to independently verify that they had received orders to kill Neom’s resisting locals. It did point out that the claim was in line with Huwaiti’s death’s timing and that at least one unidentified source had supported the death order.
Andy Wirth, a second consultant for the story, claimed he had concerns about the evictions there during his time there, but received no specific information. He worked on a proposed ski resort there for five months in 2020.
” It just reeked of something terrible]that ] had been exacted upon these people … You do n’t step on their throats with your boot heels so you can advance”, he told the BBC.
Since he left, Wirth has been one of the most vocal on-the-record critics of the Neom project. In 2022, Wirth lamented that Saudi authorities wanted him to encroach upon the land by causing what he called a “massive open-pit mine,” which he called “massive open-pit mine.”
” We were hanging buildings on the side of cliffs, and we did n’t even know the geology”, Wirth said at the time, speaking to Bloomberg for an extensive article on the challenges facing MBS’s signature project. According to Wirth, the project “does not seem to be tethered to reality, objectively” in its entirety.
Two years later, Neom appears to be struggling to fulfill its lofty objectives in time, despite widespread human rights concerns. The Line, a proposed skyscraper that Saudi officials claim will eventually house 1.5 million people, is one of Neom’s most well-known of the proposed facilities, which are sports and concert venues, luxury beach resorts, and tech innovation offices. The Line is designed to be a silver, 106- mile long building with its own internal commuter rail system and entire walkable neighborhoods within, all running on “green” technology.
According to an anonymous source, Neom planners dramatically reduced their expectations for the Line’s progress, predicting 300, 000 residents will live there by 2030, compared to 1.5 million.
The Line will be constructed in stages, according to officials, who have long stated that they anticipate it will eventually cover a 170-kilometer stretch of desert along the coast. With the latest pullback, though, officials expect to have just 2.4 kilometers of the project completed by 2030″, Bloomberg claimed at the time.
The project is too expensive and presents too many real-world challenges, according to Neom planners, who have largely ignored these concerns. In an interview with the Discovery Channel in June, MSS himself described building Neom as “very doable.” No issues with building permits or financing have been resolved by Neom officials.
On Wednesday, Neom announced the debut of yet another neighborhood in the future city,” Jaumur,  , the largest cosmopolitan luxury community set on the coast of Gulf of Aqaba”.
Watch the video:
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Jaumur will allegedly house 6, 000 people and include “500 marina apartments and nearly 700 luxury villas, with waterfront access”, as well as a world- class marine biology and oceanography research facility.
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