Tunisia NGOs lead demos against bin Salman's visit

By Seifeddin Mahjoub

TUNIS

Tunisian NGOs will stage protests on Monday against a planned visit by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the country.

"Civil society organizations will organize protests against bin Salman’s visit,” Sakina Abdel-Samad, a member of the National Union of Tunisian Journalists, told a press conference in capital Tunis.

“We will also file a lawsuit over war crimes being committed in war-torn Yemen,” she said.

Groups that plan the protests include the Association of Tunisian Newspaper Directors (Turess), the National Syndicate of Journalists, the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women of Tunisia, the Tunisian Forum on Economic and Social Rights, the Tunisian Young Lawyers Association and the Tunisian Women's Association.

Abdel-Samad said the Tunisian Journalists Syndicate had received a “thank-you message” from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) for its position against bin Salman's visit.

Tunisia is part of bin Salman’s current tour, which started with visiting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last week.

A poster of the Saudi crown prince holding a saw with slogans reading “Not Welcome in Tunisia, Land of Revolution” has been hung on the headquarters of the Journalists Syndicate in Tunis.

Bin Salman’s tour is his first since Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and a columnist for The Washington Post, was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month.

After initially saying Khashoggi had left the consulate alive, weeks later the Saudi administration admitted he was killed there, blaming a rogue group of Saudi operatives.