Dissidents form party to challenge kingdom
A daring new political party founded by exiled Saudi activists is challenging the country’s rulers with a campaign to bring free speech and democracy to the ultraconservative Gulf state.
The National Assembly Party, founded by a band of Saudi artists, scholars and dissidents, has called for an end to political repression in the kingdom and hopes to become Saudi Arabia’s de facto opposition.
Professor Madawi al-rasheed, the party’s London-based spokeswoman, said the number of Saudi dissidents living abroad has reached a ‘‘critical mass’’ and that the group now plans to unite them as a pro-democracy movement.
‘‘This party builds on the active will of a generation of Saudis who have called for political and civil reform, rather than cosmetic reform,’’ she said.
It came as a similar group led by friends and allies of the slain Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, was officially launched in Washington yesterday, ahead of the second anniversary of his death on October 2.
Created by Khashoggi shortly before his death, Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) has the broader goal of fostering democratic values across the Middle East and North Africa.
Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, was killed and dismembered by Saudi agents inside the country’s Istanbul consulate in 2018. A passionate advocate of reforming Saudi society, he was a vocal critic of Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and de facto ruler.
The crown prince has faced repeated accusations that he ordered the killing, though he denies this and insists it was carried out by rogue operatives. Earlier this year, a Saudi court jailed eight people for their role in the murder but did not identify them.
Sarah Leah Whitson, Dawn’s executive director, said they would realise Khashoggi’s dream of giving a voice to the ‘‘thousands of political exiles like Jamal, who demand democracy and human rights as the only way to ensure peace’’.
According to Saudi Arabia’s own estimates, the number of exiled citizens is expected to exceed 50,000 by 2030, while the UN’S refugee agency says Saudi asylum applications tripled between 2012 and 2017.
Professor Rasheed added that her National Assembly’s key ambitions were to bring democracy, elections, a parliamentary system and free speech to the country.
Political parties are banned in Saudi Arabia under its Basic Law and those who challenge the kingdom’s leadership risk long jail sentences.
In its mission statement, the National Assembly Party’s founders stress that they bear ‘‘no personal animosity with the ruling family’’, in what appears to be an attempt to avoid reprisals from Riyadh. Among the founders is Yahya Assiri, a 39-year-old human rights activist and former Royal Saudi Air Force member who was granted asylum in the UK in 2017.
Both opposition groups are likely to draw strong disapproval from the Crown Prince, who recently launched a crackdown on perceived rivals inside the country. Tensions in the ruling elite have simmered since March, when there were reports that the crown prince had arrested at least three members of the royal family, supposedly as they were plotting a coup against him.
There are also rumours of a rift between the crown prince and 84-year-old King Salman as to whether the Kingdom should follow the United Emirates and Bahrain in normalising ties with Israel. –