A Saudi princess wages a campaign against the “Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” police group

The newspaper added that 27 year old princess Basma, the youngest daughter of King Saud (Second King of Saudi Arabia) and niece of King Abdullah, is a divorced mother of five and moved to London five years ago. She has become a businesswoman, journalist, and blogger that sheds the light in her writings on sensitive subjects such as violations of woman’s rights, poverty in her country, and the effect of the Saudi religious police.

The princess stated that she wasn’t forced to leave Saudi Arabia and her criticism is not about her uncle King Abdullah or other senior members of the royal regime, but she focuses on the conservatives that run the Kingdom. She continued saying that she is neither mutinous nor calling for change, but she doesn’t hesitate to criticize matters that arise in her country due to the poor governance skills of the ministers in rule to implement what the higher command tells them to, and she gave an example that a poor person’s hand is cut after his third crime, but if he is rich nobody charges him.

The princess also said that there are 15,000 members of the royal family of which 13,000 are not as rich as the rest, and there are only 2,000 members that are millionaires and have full powers and against which no one can speak up in fear of losing what they have.

The princess criticized the religious police known as the “Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” and considered that it has the biggest effect on the Saudi society through separating the sexes and inducing wrong thoughts in the heads of men and women which result in psychological diseases that were unknown in Saudi Arabia like extremism.

The princess pointed out to the human rights violations that occur to both sexes in Saudi Arabia but affect women more, and added that the focus continues to ban the Saudi Arabian women to drive a car, and even though she cannot go to college or work without the permission of her legal guardian we must fight for a woman’s right to file a complaint against physical violence because it is a much more important matter than driving a car.

She concluded by saying: I am still an obedient citizen and I will always support the Saudi Royal family, but I will not remain silent regarding what happens in reality and regarding the dishonesty in distributing wealth and power that was given unevenly based on people’s loyalty to those who outrank them.”