The Communist Party in Saudi Arabia (Arabic: الحزب الشيوعي في السعودية, Hizb al-Shuyu'i fi al-Sa'udiyah) was a political party in Saudi Arabia. The CPSA was formed on August 31, 1975. It had its origins in the National Renewal Front which was founded on September 23, 1954 and transformed in the National Liberation Front on October 17, 1958. The NLF was part of the Arab National Liberation Front since 1963. The communists inside the NLF had a separate organization called the Organization of Saudi Communists (OSC). The remainder of the NLF founded the CPSA in 1975.
The party was always illegal and persecuted by the regime.
The CPSA had a youth organization, the Union of Democratic Youth - Saudi Arabia (Ittihad ash-Shabab ad-Dimuqrati fi al-Sa'udiyah), with office in Damascus, Syria. Other organizations close to the CPSA were the Workers' Federation of Saudi Arabia, the National Union of Students of Saudi Arabia (NUSSA) and the Democratic Women's League of Saudi Arabia.
Its central organ was Tariq al-Qadyhin ("Way of the Toilers").
The CPSA had close relations with other Arab communist parties and was a pro-Soviet party.
The party had renamed itself as Democratic Unification in Saudi Arabia (التجمع الديموقراطي في السعودية) in the beginning of the 1990s. Soon thereafter, the regime released the political prisoners of the party in exchange that the party promised to disband.
Famous quotes containing the words communist and/or party:
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“This will not be disloyalty but will show that as members of a party they are loyal first to the fine things for which the party stands and when it rejects those things or forgets the legitimate objects for which parties exist, then as a party it cannot command the honest loyalty of its members.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)