MENA Rights Group, a Geneva-based legal advocacy NGO that focuses on the protection and promotion of fundamental rights and freedoms in the Middle East and North Africa, and ALQST for Human Rights, a UK-based human rights NGO that defends and promotes human rights in Saudi Arabia, are writing to you regarding reports that your club are in talks with Saudi Arabia’s state- owned Qiddiya project about a 10-year €150 million partnership deal.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is ruled by a repressive and autocratic regime that tolerates no criticism or dissent. Since the self-styled “reformist” Mohammed bin Salman came to power in 2017, the country has witnessed an intensified crackdown on civic freedoms and peaceful dissent, including the detention and brutal torture of women human rights defenders, the ongoing detention and unfair trials for a vast number of prisoners of conscience, and the gruesome state-sanctioned murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Human rights defenders and activists are not able to freely carry out their work, nor is anyone able to freely engage in public debate or protest, without facing reprisals.