In a newly-released report, The Economist warned that the Saudi Crown Prince and de-facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) 2030 vision will only augur destruction more than reconstruction.
A project costing $45bn to overhaul Jeddah was unveiled 13 years ago, but never materialised. This time, befuddled residents have seen plans only for the waterfront and for converting an obsolete desalination plant into an opera house. For homeless Saudis, the prince’s masterplan, Vision 2030, augurs destruction more than reconstruction, according to the report.
MBS vs Napoleon
As popular anger has been growing on social media, Saudi officials launched a campaign to boost MBS’s image. They liken Prince MBS to Emperor Napoleon III, who replaced Paris’s slums with leafy boulevards and parks in the 1850s and 1860s.
For its part, France 24 has reported that thousands of people remain homeless after the Saudi government launched a massive demolition campaign targeting dozens of poor neighbourhoods in Jeddah, to make way for an urban development project, in reference to Vision 2030.
Tens of Thousands Affected
The 75 billion Saudi Riyals project will develop 5.7 million square meters of land overlooking the Red Sea to be financed by the Public Investment Fund and from local and international investors.
According to the tables published by the Jeddah Municipality, the demolition and construction works will affect at least 37 neighbourhoods, with a total area of 31.2 million cubic meters.
200,000 homes, in which nearly one million people live, who make up a quarter of the population of Jeddah, will also be demolished.
According to rights sources, 7,196 people from the Dhahban neighbourhood will be displaced, 10,906 from the Thuwal neighbourhood, 7,973 from the Nozha neighbourhood, 9388 from the Mushrifa neighbourhood, 121590 from al-Jamaa neighbourhood, and 44,385 from the Hindawiya neighbourhood.
Tens of thousands of Jeddah residents have become homeless, while Saudi authorities continue to manipulate over their file.
Growing anger
The mass demolition campaign has triggered a growing anger among Saudis who went into Twitter and TikTok to express their total rejection and condemnation to the ongoing demolition policy.
An Anonymous Twitter account said that more than 1 million people are homeless in Jeddah city because Saudi government destroyed their houses, stressing that forced displacement is a crime.
https://twitter.com/SaudiExile/status/1560599954917576704
Along the same line, many Twitter accounts retweeted Amnesty International as saying that “the ongoing demolition of dozens of neighbourhoods in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah to enable redevelopment is violating human rights standards through forced evictions and a lack of compensation for foreign residents.”
https://twitter.com/Spring02060527/status/1542788244919574528
