March 11, which social-networking Saudi dissidents had chosen for a “Day of Rage,” has come and gone without the emergence—so far—of a massive and turbulent reform movement like those seen in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Demonstrations by members of the Saudi Shia community in the Eastern Province, where oil is plentiful and Shias are a majority, took place on March 10, in the Shia center at Qatif. They did not feature the sweeping demands for change seen in the North African “Arab Spring,” but called for release of nine Shia activists who have been imprisoned by Saudi authorities for 14 years. Police fired on the Qatif marchers, and three people were injured. But the next day, as dissidents assembled in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, a second round of Shia protests took place in the Qatif area without violence apart from some arrests.
The “Day of Rage” in Riyadh was also subdued, with massed police in the streets of the Saudi capital as one among other deterrents. Demonstrators in the Riyadh event were few. On Sunday, a smaller group gathered in Riyadh to call for release of Saudis held on terrorism charges. This illustrated one factor in the dampening of a Saudi democratization movement. That is, in addition to those discontented with the regime’s lack of parliamentary and other constitutional institutions, as noted in a blog item by James Phillips of the Heritage Foundation, Islamist radicals have mounted their own effort against the state.
