The Public Sit-in Has Been Canceled
On Tuesday December 21 2010, the public sit-in organizers were summoned to the Ministry of Interior (MOI). They were informed that the sit-in request was refused without providing further legal justification preventing peaceful assemblies and protests.
Accordingly, the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA) announces the cancellation of the public sit-in. We would like to take this opportunity to express our deepest appreciations to everyone who contributed to this activity and to the signatories of the petition. We look forward to their continuing cooperation in other events in the near future, God willing.
ACPRA Calls For All Saudis To Participate In A Public Sit-in To Demand Political Reform: The Intended Sit-in Will Take Place On December 23 2010 In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Saturday, November 13, 2010.
Dear Fellow Citizens: As The Proverb Goes: ‘No Right Will Be Lost As Long As People Continue To Fight For Their Rights’
The Following Twenty Rights,
Do you want to achieve them for you, your relatives, and your fellow citizens?:
1. Job opportunities for you, your brother, son, relatives, or fellow citizens.
2. Health care and a hospital bed for those who are in need.
3. State of the art education for your children.
4. Equality of people in public office, allocation of income and services among regions and classes.
5. Guaranteeing the unemployed basic needs such as food, drink, clothing and housing; until finding appropriate job.
6. Better cares for the poor, widows, and orphans.
7. Canceling the princes’ privileges, and ensuring their equality with people.
8. Eradicating bribery and nepotism.
9. Applying the criterion of ‘the right person in the right place.’
10. Fairness and impartiality of the judiciary (independence), without interference, procrastination, and favoritism.
11. preventing arbitrary detention, torture, and harassment in prisons.
12. Transparency, accountability, and control over the national income and how it be spent, so your future, the future of your children, grandchildren, and the future of your country aren’t held up by government debt or secret treaties.
13. Decreasing drug and alcohol abuses, suicide incidents, and mental and physical illnesses associated with drug abuse; the number of drug victims exceeded a hundred and twenty thousand individuals.
14. Electing trustworthy representatives by the nation; who can draw education and media policies, and can develop school curricula that strengthen ethics, integrity, dignity, and work initiative.
15. Establishing the state relationships with other Arab, Islamic, and international countries on the basis of people to people, instead of rulers to rulers.
16. Obliterating violence, extremism, and terrorism which are caused by the state’s injustice, repression, and counter violence. Do you know that the main cause of violence is political? There are approximately a hundred thousand prisoners accused of violence? Do you know that the only solution is to achieve equality, dignity, justice, and freedom of opinion, expression, and assembly; without which we can’t withdraw the rug beneath the feet of violence.
17. Promulgating the Law ‘from where do you get this’, and it must be applied equally to princes, governors, judges, and all high-ranked individuals without exceptions.
18. There is no dignity of a nation without the dignity of its members, and you want every citizen to raise his head, with nothing to fear but God, and what the individual’s hands have reaped.
19. Freedom of endowments, mosques, education, journalism and media from government interventions.
20. Justice, consultation, equality, tolerance, and pluralism are the safety valve that could save the country’s unity.
These twenty noble goals can only be achieved via genuine political reform, which stems from the stewardship of the nation, which can be briefed as: the development of a political system of governance from the forced desperate allegiance (stewardship of the government over the nation) to the legitimate choice allegiance (the stewardship of the nation over the government; i.e., the Islamic Constitution).
Let us declare our demands through this peaceful struggle.
Please, join us by signing this following permission request for the public sit-in.
Respectfully,
The Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association
(ACPRA)
A Permission Request For A Peaceful Sit-in
Date: Saturday, November 13, 2010.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
To: His Royal Highness Prince Naif Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the Interior Minister.
We want you provide us the opportunity to peacefully express our demand for political reform, on the basis of the requirements of the allegiance: the stewardship of the nation over the ruler. Because it is the only way to ensure the means to, and the guarantees of, justice and democracy via the following:
1. Without stewardship of the nation on its staff, governors and judges; it would be impossible to ensure justice unless following the known twenty specific criteria, most important of which is that the court judge is mandated by the nation, not by the ruler.
2. It would be impossible to deepen the accountability and control principles, as long as the prime minister comes from the ruling family, but from the people, and his appointment is subject to known constitutional procedures.
3. It would be impossible to solidify the accountability and control principles unless reducing the number of the ruling family who occupy senior positions, and even accepting the principle of power transfers, control, prosecution, and accountability.
4. We won’t be able to entrench the accountability and control system unless provincial governors and Consultative Council members are elected by the people.
5. We won’t be able to entrench the accountability and control system without effective civil societies with a clear mandate.
6. Islam won’t be the solution to today’s problems, hence, applying Islamic Jurisprudence won’t be valid unless democracy and justice are implemented because Islam and tyranny are mutually exclusive.
7. Without the stewardship of the nation, application of Islamic Jurisprudence on the whole is impossible because the nation-neither rulers nor clerics- is the guardian for both the faith and the state, through its elected deputies can outline policies for domestic, foreign, and educational policies; the nation can also supervise the implementation of such policies.
8. It has been shown throughout the world, East and West, that justice, equality, democracy, and good governance, are not attainable without separation of powers, rather than the concept of “the guardian knows the best” which manifests tyranny.
9. Without the principle of stewardship of the nation; the legitimate allegiance won’t be guaranteed, through which the government is merely an agent working for the people, not a guardian over the nation.
10. Without the principle of nation’s stewardship; NGOs and the Council of Representatives won’t have mandates to operate and best serve the people. Without such process in place, the nation will continue under the guardianship of the dangerous duality, rulers and clerics. The center of it all is the legitimate allegiance, which resulted in the stewardship of the nation via the promotion of the system of governance away from the forced allegiance into the legitimate choice allegiance: summarized in the phrase (the constitution and the Islamic civil society).
Mr. Prince:
For all that, we want you to permit a public sit-in to take place on Thursday, December 23, 2010, in the Nahdah Road on the East of Riyadh, between the hours 3-5 PM,
Involving two groups: the first group of scholars, intellectuals, and concern citizens,
secondly, a group of women activists in the field of human rights.
We hope that you agree to granting a permission to the public sit-in so that people can express their feelings peacefully in a very civilized and polite manner.
We take this opportunity to remind you that our country has suffered from violence due to the loss of liberty and the prohibition of opinion and expression. We can only pull the rug beneath the feet of violence by removing congestion and allowing people to express their personal sentiments as individuals and groups.
In the context of addressing the causes of violence, we hope this initiative will win your permission and generous support to make appropriate arrangements and coordination with the concerned parties to maintain public order.
Respectfully,
The Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association
(ACPRA)
To sign the public sit-in request letter, please contact:
1. Ayman Mohammed Al-Rashid, Mobile: 0505288354.
2. Ibrahim Saad Al-Nofell, Mobile: 0503266144
3. Abdulrahman Jamaan Al-Dosari, Mobile: 0554932349
Media Spokesman:
Mohammed Saleh Al-Bejadee, Mobile: 0553256777
Activists Who So Far Signed The Request:
1. Ibrahim Saad Al-Nofell,
2. Ibrahim Mugateeb Al-Mugaiteeb,
3. Aymaan Said Ali Al-Yami,
4. Ayman Mohammed Al-Rashed,
5. Hamid Mohammad Hamid Al-Hamid,
6. Khalid Jaudaee Nader Al-Qahtani,
7. Khalid Abdullah Mabrouk Al-Adwani Al-Zahrani,
8. Reema Abdulrahman Jurish,
9. Saud Ahmed Deghaither,
10. Saeed Ahmed Ghormallah Al-Foqahaa,
11. Saeed Jaudaee Nader Al-Qahtani,
12. Shooq Mukhlef Daham Al-Shammary
13. Abdulrahman Jaman Mubarak Al-Dosari,
14. Dr. Abdulrahman Hamid Ali Hamid,
15. Abdulrahman Radhi Omran Al-Suhaimi Al-Harbi,
16. Abdulaziz Ahmed Gharmallah Al-Fuqahaa,
17. Dr. Abdulkarim Youssef Al-Khathar,
18. Abdulmohsin Ali Musa Al-Ayashi,
19. Dr. Abdullah bin Hamed Ali Al-Hamid, Abu Bilal,
20. Essa Hamed Ali Al-Hamid,
21. Ghormallah Mohammed Al-Fuqahaa,
22. Abdulaziz Mohammed Abdulaziz Al-Whaibi,
23. Fahad Abdulaziz Al-Oraini,
24. Fahad Munif Turki Al-Qahtani,
25. Fowzan Mohsen Awad Al-Harbi,
26. Qubool Saad Al-Hajri,
27. Mohammed Saleh bin Othman Al-Bejadee,
28. Mohammed Abdullah Mohammed Al-Draiby,
29. Mohammed Abdullah Moghairan Al-Harbi,
30. Mohammed Ali Abdullah Al-Murshid,
31. Mohammed Hamad Abdullah Al- Mohaisen,
32. Dr. Mohammad Fahad Al-Qahtani,
33. Muhanna Mohammed Al-Faleh,
34. Nader Jaudaee Nader Al-Qahtani,
35. Mansour Ali Mohammed Al-Qahtani,
36. Abdullah Mohammed Abdullah Al- Salmi Al-Enezy,
37. Othaman Saleh Ali Al-Saleh,
38. Ali Ahmad Ali Al-Shamlan,
39. Fatema Humaidan Abdulaziz Al-Humaidan,
40. Mukhlef Daham Al-Shammary,
41. Hani Mohammed Saad Al-Rowaished,
42. Dr. Abdulaziz Saeed Al-Ghamdi,
43. Abdullah Saad Al-Ahmary,
44. Faihan Mohammed Al-Otaibi,
45. Ali Homood Gloos,
46. Ahmad Mohammed Zooly,
47. Sulaiman Ali Al-Enezy,
48. Norah Abdullah Al-Bahooth,
49. Abdulaziz Ali Al-Olaiyan,
50. Dr. Ibrahim Saqer Al-Musallam
51. Khalid Ali Al-Dabibi
52. Salem Ahmad Al-Ghamdi
53. Saleha Musaed Al-Juhani
54. Dhafer Daifullah Al-Shehri
55. Adel Mohammad Al-Juhani
56. Abdulaziz Abdulrahman Al-Ghefari
57. Abdulaziz Abdullatif Al-Snaidi
58. Abdulqodoos Abdulelah Al-Hashmi
59. Abdullah Sulaiman Al- Moqbel
60. Omar Mohammad Al-Muqati
61. Mohammad Saad Al-Juhani
62. Mohammad Ali Howail
63. Mohammad Nasser Al-Ghamdi
64. Hind Mohammad Al-Juhani