Members of the European Parliament in Brussels have called on the European Union to drop out of the upcoming G20 summit in Riyadh, citing human rights concerns. They urged the EU to recognise that projects like Neom and its Vision 2030 plan should not distract from the country’s appalling human rights record.
The G20 is set to be hosted remotely from by Saudi Arabia’s de-facto ruler, crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), in November.
Some 45 MEPs signed a letter to European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen and European Council president Charles Michel, which argues that “our participation in the upcoming G20 in Saudi Arabia would not only compromise our values, but also contradict the very resolutions passed in our parliament”.
Among their concerns, MEPs noted the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi security forces in 2018, and the country’s ongoing war in Yemen, which had cost tens of thousands of civilians’ lives.
The MEPs write: “Despite the authorities still portraying the country as striving for reform, invoking its economic Vision 2030 and prestigious projects such as the Neom megacity scheme, the Saudi authorities continue to violate a variety of the most basic human rights, including the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly and the right to liberty and security of person, as well as the right to freedom from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and the right to life, not to mention Saudi Arabia’s ongoing involvement in the conflict in Yemen.”
Neom is the $500bn megacity project being built as part of MBS s Vision 2030, a plan to diversify the Saudi economy and bring in overseas investment. Part of Vision 2030 is an attempt to appear modern and progressive to the rest of the world – but Saudi Arabia’s human rights record continues to blight its attempts to do so.
