A new documentary, Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia, has revealed the total amount of worker deaths related to Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Vision 2030, a multitrillion dollar program which includes NEOM and the Line.
According to the exposé by ITV, more than 21,000 Indian, Bangladeshi, and Nepalese workers have died in Saudi Arabia since 2017 working on various aspects of Saudi Vision 2030. And according to The Hindustan Times, reports show that more than 100,000 people have “disappeared” during NEOM’s construction.
Workers also say that, under current working conditions, they are “trapped slaves” and “beggars.” There’s also been reports of wage theft, illegal working hours, and human rights abuses. More than 20,000 Indigenous people were also forcefully removed from the region to make way for NEOM.
The ITV documentary comes on the heels of another damning report by Wall Street Journal from last September. In that report, senior executives behind NEOM were accused of corruption, racism, Islamophobia, and misogyny.
One of those Australian executives, Wayne Borg, was accused of making several racist comments about laborers. After three workers died from a falling pipe, a wall collapse, and the mishandling of explosives, Borg said over obtained audio: “A whole bunch of people die so we’ve got to have a meeting on a Sunday night.”
Borg also said South Asian laborers working on NEOM were “fucking morons” so “that is why white people are at the top of the pecking order.” He also said Gulf women were “tranvestites.”
Later, in May, AN reported that plans from Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration were revealed that showed a speculative train line connecting NEOM and a new city built atop Gaza, Palestine.
Some architects like Mecanoo, Coop Himmelb(l)au, and Adjaye Associates have resigned from NEOM after human rights abuses came to light, but most have not.
According to reporting from Dezeen last summer, Morphosis, who drew up the master plan, is still on the project. And so is BIG, Zaha Hadid Architects, OMA, UNStudio, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, Mark Foster Gage, HOK, Studio Fuksas, Oyler Wu Collaborative, Tom Wiscombe Architecture, and others.
