Human rights committee waits for Saudi consent to launching it

Two Saudi Arabian reforming activists announced in Bahrain yesterday that 53 of their activists colleagues and intellectuals, including 10 women, are waiting for the reply of the Saudi government to its request to annouce a Saudi national committee for human rights they had applied for nine months before.

Writer Najib al-Khineizi said that the group "applied for that with the ministry of social affairs and Labor in order to declare a human rights people's committee " under the name the 'Saudi people committee for human rights' in March, 2003," noting that the ministry informed then that the request was submitted to supreme sides.

In May this year, the Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal announced that King Fahd approved the foundation of a People's Society for Human Rights, that will be the first in the Kingdom, and to start its activities very soon. For his part, the Saudi writer Ali al-Dumeini said that the signatures of the request "belong to various areas in the Kingdom, and they are academics, intellectuals and activists and writers including 10 women."

He added "what we are doing copes with the proposals of the government in its commitment to achieving reform in the Kingdom." Al-Khineizi and al-Dumeini, two Saudi reformer activists arrived in Bahrain several days ago within a group of Saudi activists to take part in the celebrations of the Bahraini society for Human Rights on the human rights world day.