The elusive prospect of a representative government chosen by the people of Saudi Arabia brought together activists and dissidents from across the diaspora for an in-person conference held inside a ballroom of the Gaylord Convention Center overlooking the National Harbor outside of Washington, DC. With the aim of laying the groundwork for the eventual overthrow of authoritarian rule in the kingdom, a number of organizations organized the Quest for Democracy in Saudi Arabia conference on Thursday, which marked the completion of a year-long organizing effort under the “People’s Vision” banner.
The gathering A historic moment
This is an extraordinary assembly of stakeholders from think tanks, international organizations, activists, and policymakers. All in order to address one topic: authoritarianism in Saudi Arabia,” said Abdullah Alaoudh, who organized the conference and serves as director for the Middle East Democracy Center’s counter-authoritarianism program in Washington, DC, to Middle East Eye. “This gathering helps to assure a new phase of our work on countering the authoritarian practices of the Saudi government.” Leading Saudi women’s rights activist Lina al-Hathloul, who is the sister of the formerly imprisoned Loujain al-Hathloul, stated that the “People’s Vision” initiative and set of policy reforms created by Saudi activists, academics, and intellectuals served as the impetus for the conference’s idea and were developed in response to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 agenda.
Challenging the status quo
Hathloul, who is also the head of monitoring and advocacy for the rights group ALQST, told “We’re gathered with more and more Saudi activists and people who are fed up with the government’s policies, or those who have fled the country and they don’t consider themselves as dissidents, but who want to change the country for the better.” “At this conference, we’re working towards gathering people to discuss issues that we think are of the utmost importance, and that are linked to the People’s Vision.” During the conference, Moncef Marzouki, the former president of Tunisia, who now has an arrest warrant out for him by the current Kais Saied government, delivered a speech. In order to better connect with the Saudi attendees, both in person and virtually he opted to speak in Arabic. “We won’t stop here, but our hardships and pains will not end here. We’ll keep dreaming and working toward our objectives, hopefully,” Marzouki remarked.
International advocacy and support
Over 59,000 individuals watched the conference live online in addition to those who attended in person. “The diverse attendance here shows that we are broadening our coalition in order to push for the agenda of the people’s vision for Saudi Arabia, which includes democracy, human rights, and basic liberties,” Alaoudh remarked. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been cracking down on political dissidents, human rights activists, and government opponents since taking office in 2017. When Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who wrote for the Washington Post and Middle East Eye, was killed on October 2, 2018, inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey, the world’s attention was drawn to the repressive campaign. The murder caused anger throughout the world, and although the crown prince denied any involvement, an intelligence report issued by the Biden administration in 2021 said that the crown prince could not have been unaware of the death.
Facing challenges and moving forward
in October 2018 on the Tiger Squad, a killing squad that the crown prince commands and oversees. This squad was responsible for Khashoggi’s torture, death, and dismemberment, a Saudi source with direct knowledge of the nation’s intelligence agencies claimed.
A few years later, in 2020, a former senior Saudi intelligence officer named Saad al-Jabri filed a lawsuit in Washington, claiming that the Saudi government attempted to kill him while he was in Canada by utilizing the tiger squad. The US’s fury over Khashoggi’s death has mostly dissipated by 2024. Moreover, Washington and Riyadh are allegedly attempting to negotiate a security agreement, despite US President Biden’s prior designation of Saudi Arabia as a “pariah”. Additionally, Biden is making a concerted effort to persuade Saudi Arabia to restore ties with Israel. Meanwhile, internally and internationally, Saudi dissidents and those from other nations, like Egypt, continue to face repression. According to a survey published last year, two-thirds of those questioned who had links to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, either personally or professionally, have experienced acts of persecution while on US land.
Exploring potential pathways
Among other tactics, rejections of legal papers, monitoring, and physical intimidation are instances of this international repression. Many of the attendees at the meeting on Thursday, many of whom are themselves dissidents with relatives imprisoned back home in Saudi Arabia or other Arab nations, felt a sense of solidarity. “It says a lot about the state of our countries as a whole that we’re all struggling the same struggle, but it also means that we finally came to the conclusion as Arab peoples that our struggle is shared and that we should be standing in solidarity together,” Hathloul stated.