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Saudi Arabia: Newcastle United FC criticised over training camp that "sportswashes" Saudi's human rights record; NUFC did not respond
After a wave of criticism surrounding the takeover of Newcastle United by Saudi investors in 2021, the Premier League club was put in the spotlight once again following their decision to travel for a training camp in Saudi Arabia in January 2022. Amnesty International UK has expressed concerns that this move might feed into the PR agenda of Saudi authorities to deflect attention from their long list of human rights abuses.
In February 2022 Business & Human Rights Resource Centre invited Newcastle United Football Club to respond to the concerns raised in this article.
The closed-door trial of Jamal Khashoggi’s alleged killers was little more than a whitewash and Saudi Arabia is implicated in an entire catalogue of crimes under international humanitarian law in the long-running conflict in Yemen. If the Newcastle training camp becomes a glorified PR exercise for Mohammed bin Salman’s government it will prove once again that sportswashing human rights crimes is the name of the game here — not football.Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK