RIYADH, 11 May 2004 — For the first time in Saudi history, a peaceful march went ahead in Jeddah as some 200 students from four National Guard schools carrying anti-terror banners took to the streets early yesterday morning.
The students, aged between 12 and 18, were dressed in sweat pants, white T-shirts and caps bearing the words “Together Against Terrorism”.
The march started at 7 a.m. from the National Guard housing complex on Palestine Street, where the schools are located, and ended four kilometers away on the same road.
Chanting anti-terror slogans, students held banners aloft that read “Together for the Sake of the Country” and “Hand in Hand Against Terrorism”.
A source told Arab News that the march lasted for a little over an hour, adding that the police did not interfere.
According to the source, the march was organized by the student activity committee in the National Guard. The source said that the students wanted to pioneer “a unique, unprecedented student activity in the Kingdom” that could be practiced nationwide at some point in the future.
This was the first quasi-independent march not interrupted by police, a possible sign that government policy on demonstrations is changing provided they serve the interest of the country.
Some years ago, police broke up a peaceful demonstration on Tahlia Street by a group of Saudi women against Israeli atrocities against Palestinians and arrested the demonstrators.
They later asked the women’s male guardians to sign undertakings never to engage in such activities again.
On Oct. 14 last year, police, anti-riot squads and Special Forces units rounded up some 300 protesters on Riyadh’s Olaya Street who were demonstrating on the second day of the Kingdom’s first human rights conference. The authorities later released some bystanders, but some remain jailed for violating laws that ban all public forms of protest.
Other charges of “sedition” and “undermining public security” were also brought against them. A similar protest planned in Jeddah the following week was prevented from taking place by the police.
It was later revealed that some of the Riyadh protesters had been influenced by calls from London-based Saudi dissident Saad Al-Faqih, whom the Interior Ministry has linked with the terrorist responsible for last week’s killing spree in Yanbu.
