A Saudi student in China sent me this (he/she obviously does not wish to be identified):
"Wallahi sometimes it feels as if we Saudis deserve this reputation somewhat. There is a very servile attitude amongst good chunks of the Saudi public that can be quite shocking sometimes. I'll give you a very recent example: prince Salman is visiting China currently, and the embassy decided to hold a dinner for him and invited Saudi citizens to come (it was a complete mess - they had an 'open invitation' that was closed an hour later, people coming in through connections, crowds that werent allowed entry at all, and as it turned out, the secret service 'selecting' and screening a group of students - 150 - who would meet the prince in groups.) I went to observe the spectacle, and although in the larger scheme of things it was a waste of time that could have been better used elsewhere.
"Wallahi sometimes it feels as if we Saudis deserve this reputation somewhat. There is a very servile attitude amongst good chunks of the Saudi public that can be quite shocking sometimes. I'll give you a very recent example: prince Salman is visiting China currently, and the embassy decided to hold a dinner for him and invited Saudi citizens to come (it was a complete mess - they had an 'open invitation' that was closed an hour later, people coming in through connections, crowds that werent allowed entry at all, and as it turned out, the secret service 'selecting' and screening a group of students - 150 - who would meet the prince in groups.) I went to observe the spectacle, and although in the larger scheme of things it was a waste of time that could have been better used elsewhere.
Most of the Saudis who came to the event were carrying letters to ask for redress from the prince personally, although no one got to meet him face to face (we 'saw' him from afar in the dinner hall - his sons were all there with him, including Mohammed 'the shit' as he is called in Riyadh) with the exception of the 150 students, none of whom it turned out later actually spoke to him or had a chance to raise their concerns (many of the letters werent even collected.) When people tried to approach him, the secret service were all over them. You also had the the cheesy 'spontanous' poem recitation given by a Saudi student who was awarded later apparently. The whole thing was a mess, and to my mind anyway, shows the anxiety the princes have towards the public. What made it all worse however is that the vast majority of people were there for money (as you might have heard, the students in Japan had each received $10,000 as a royal gift and those in India something around $3000.) Of course nearly everyone left complaining from the event. I had the chance to leave....on... Most of them appeared to be from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and had clearly come to ask for help with regards to their issues. According to some of them, they had obtained an ok' from the embassy to meet the prince personally, but the royal chief of staff vetoed it.
I should add that the prince's delegation had a considerable number of journalists you might be familiar with from Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. They looked like they were on vacation."
PS I asked my informant about the nickname Prince "Muhammad the shit", and he explained:
"As for Mohammed el-zagg, its because of his greed in amassing lands. The people in Riyadh hate him, although they love his father. Unfortunately for them, his father, particularly in the last few years, has grown extremely fond of him and indulges his every whim. There is this one story of a Saudi businessman (I think Ajlan but Im not sure) asking Salman to intervene and stop his son from taking a part of his land, with Salman basically implying that he should let it go. There is another story, which was confirmed by my sources to be true, in which Mohammed gave a Katib A'dil two bullets when the latter told him he could not forge a land-title for property that was not owned by the prince."
