An ex-intelligence officer tells the BBC he was permitted to shoot dead those resisting eviction.

Col Rabih Alenezi says he was ordered to evict villagers from a tribe in the Gulf state to make way for The Line, part of the Neom eco-project.

One of them was subsequently shot and killed for protesting against eviction.

The Saudi government and Neom management refused to comment.

Neom, Saudi Arabia’s $500bn (£399bn) eco-region, is part of its Saudi Vision 2030 strategy which aims to diversify the kingdom’s economy away from oil.

Its flagship project, The Line, has been pitched as a car-free city, just 200m (656ft) wide and 170km (106 miles) long - though only 2.4km of the project is reportedly expected to be completed by 2030.

  • Flying SquidMEnglish
    2•7 months ago

    You do know that everyone else who wasn’t a priest or a royal lived even worse lives than that, right?

    • PugJesus
      0•7 months ago

      Okay, great, I see our argument is “Words don’t matter, corvee isn’t corvee, unskilled labor isn’t unskilled labor; because they lived in a barracks and were fed well”.

      • Flying SquidMEnglish
        2•7 months ago

        Corvée (French: [kɔʁve] ⓘ) is a form of unpaid forced labour that is intermittent in nature, lasting for limited periods of time, typically only a certain number of days’ work each year. Statute labour is a corvée imposed by a state for the purposes of public works.[1] As such it represents a form of levy (taxation). Unlike other forms of levy, such as a tithe, a corvée does not require the population to have land, crops or cash.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvée

        How does that describe pyramid workers?

        • PugJesus
          3•7 months ago

          How does that describe pyramid workers?

          unpaid

          forced labour

          intermittent

          imposed by a state

          for the purposes of public works

          I’m not seeing the unskilled Egyptian workers we’re talking about here miss any of these criteria.

          What do you think ‘obligatory labor’ in the context of a ‘feudal’-like system for the Pharaoh by commoners on a massive construction project is exactly?

          • Flying SquidMEnglish
            1•7 months ago

            They were unpaid because Egypt didn’t have the concept of currency. They weren’t forced, they volunteered their services. All work in Egypt was intermittent due to Nile floods. It wasn’t for the purpose of public works, it was for the purpose of religion.

            But you’ve got me on the imposed by the state part.

            • PugJesus
              3•7 months ago

              They were unpaid because Egypt didn’t have the concept of currency.

              You don’t need currency to be paid.

              They weren’t forced, they volunteered their services.

              That’s not what ‘obligatory labor’ means.

              All work in Egypt was intermittent due to Nile floods.

              Okay? All work for peasantry is intermittent due to the changing of the seasons. That doesn’t mean you can’t impose corvee on a peasant - in fact, peasant farmers are USUALLY the ones who ARE getting corvee’d precise BECAUSE their own ordinary labor is intermittent. The point of distinguishing corvee as intermittent is to differentiate it from slavery and ad hoc forced labor, not because picking up drifters who do small jobs instead of full-time factory workers changes the nature of a corvee.

              It wasn’t for the purpose of public works, it was for the purpose of religion.

              It was a public monument by the government. Your own link says, and I quote:

              From the Egyptian Old Kingdom (c. 2613 BC, the 4th Dynasty) onward, corvée contributed to government projects.[6] During the times of the Nile River floods, it was used for construction projects such as pyramids, temples, quarries, canals, roads, and other works.