Sawt Falasteen - 'Saudi is the best!': Why are TikTok mumfluencers lauding desert megacity?

"If you have children, Saudi Arabia is the best place," Aida McPherson, an Azerbaijani born in London, told her almost 60,000 followers as she filmed her daughter in traditional Saudi dress on a shopping trip.

Around a dozen expat mothers have posted similar glowing accounts of the far-from-finished NEOM project in the desert championed by the kingdom's de-facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, despite concerns about continued rights violations in the country and alleged abuse of migrant building workers.

NEOM is a planned $500-billion futuristic megacity in northwestern Saudi Arabia meant to feature a ski resort, twin skyscrapers and a building known as "The Line" that will be a staggering 170 kilometres (105 miles) long.

There has been increasing scepticism over the viability of the project and reports say population projections are being scaled down.

But "influencer mums" -- often English-speaking and dressed in Western clothes -- rave about how "magnificent" everything is in NEOM, right down to the delicious food.

One Thai mumfluencer, who goes by the username "Sarasarasid", shared a video of her "typical afternoon in NEOM": a scooter ride, going for a coffee and taking her toddler to a playground. The video has been viewed around 800,000 times. The city it shows is almost deserted.

Sarasarasid also posted videos of herself at the NEOM hospital, where she gave birth, praising the quality of care.

Nearly two million people watched her be driven across a long stretch of sand in a 4x4 by her partner, a senior sales manager at NEOM since 2022 according to his LinkedIn account.

- 'Police state' -

Like many influencers, she lives in a complex reserved for project employees and their families not far from Sindalah, a luxury resort island in the Red Sea that is the first part of the NEOM project to be completed.

None agreed to be interviewed when contacted by AFP.

When he unveiled The Line in 2022, Prince Mohammed said NEOM would be home to more than a million people by 2030, and nine million by 2045.

But the developers have radically reduced their ambitions to 300,000 residents by the end of the decade, according to Bloomberg.

"These privileged influencers are part of the regime's propaganda machine to woo the West, tourists and investors," said Lina al-Hathloul from the NGO ALQST which monitors rights in Saudi Arabia.

"The daily lives of Saudi women and the people are totally different." she told AFP. Saudi Arabia "is still a police state where everything is a red line for freedom of expression".

Women are "considered to be under the guardianship of a man since birth, first that of their father and then their husband", and their "disobedience" can earn them prison time, Hathloul added.

While Prince Mohammed is credited with Saudi Arabia's modernisation, notably allowing women to drive, the kingdom's notorious guardianship system -- which requires women to get permission from male relatives for many decisions -- remains and those campaigning for its abolition have faced arrest.

Nevertheless, Western beauty influencer "skincarebestie_" in the capital Riyadh insisted in a TikTok video with over a million views that "people think that women are oppressed here, but they can work, drive, do whatever they want".

Asked if they had collaborated with these influencers, neither NEOM, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Saudi Ministry of Media nor the Saudi embassy in Paris responded to AFP's requests for comment.

- 'Smart PR' -

Nicholas McGeehan, co-director of the human rights NGO FairSquare, said the posts are "consistent with what sounds like a fairly smart PR strategy to use social media to help transform the country's image.

"This is the type of demographic that needs to see Saudi Arabia as acceptable," he told AFP.

David Rigoulet-Roze, a researcher at the French Institute for Strategic Analysis, said Riyadh regularly mobilises "hundreds of influencers" to "smash the image of an archaic country, closed in on itself, that is built on religious extremism".

Despite high-profile advertising campaigns led in particular by the likes of footballer Lionel Messi, and controversially landing the 2034 football World Cup, the kingdom and Prince Mohammed remain tarnished by the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

The killing of Khashoggi was described by a UN probe as an "extrajudicial killing for which Saudi Arabia is responsible". US intelligence agencies determined that Prince Mohammed had "approved" the operation. Riyadh denies this, blaming rogue operatives.

While the young leader presents Saudi Arabia as a more liberal country now, with tourism to be a pillar of its post-oil era, its human rights record remains problematic. Dissidents face repression and capital punishment is used en masse, monitors say, with 338 executions recorded last year, the highest figure in three decades.

In early December, Human Rights Watch also documented the "widespread abuse" of foreign workers from Asia or Africa, some of which can be considered "forced labour", "including in major projects" like NEOM.

X.AbuJaber--SF-PST