FIGHTING FOR BADAWI
Honorary citizen of Montreal
The city of Montreal made Saudi dissident Raif Badawi an honorary citizen Monday as councillors paid tribute to his struggle for human rights and six-year imprisonment.
The city council rose in unison to applaud Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haidar, who appeared in the morning with opposition councillors and former federal justice minister Irwin Cotler.
Montreal is following in the steps of Sherbrooke, which named Badawi an honorary citizen in 2015. And last Tuesday, Hampstead passed a resolution making Badawi an honorary citizen.
Haidar, who lives with her three children in Sherbrooke, 150 kilometres east of Montreal, said she hopes other municipalities across Quebec will join the movement to push for her husband’s release.
“Every time, I have hope. But up till now, I have never received good news,” she said at a press conference by opposition councillors a few hours before the monthly council meeting.
Two weeks ago, opposition city councillors Marvin Rotrand and Lionel Perez said they would submit a motion to make Badawi an honorary citizen of Montreal.
At Monday’s news conference, they promised to step up pressure on all levels of government to demand the release of Badawi, who has been in jail in Saudi Arabia for six years after being sentenced to a 10-year prison term and 1,000 lashes. He was given the first 50 lashes in 2015 during a public flogging but has since been spared more physical punishment, probably because of the ensuing global condemnation of the Saudi regime.
Cotler, an international human rights lawyer, said that growing pressure for Badawi’s release could reach a tipping point that will push Saudi Arabia to release him.
Cotler said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke directly with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman two months ago and asked that he be released so he could join his family in Quebec.
Bin Salman’s own reforms in the last year are aligned with Badawi’s ideas on women’s rights, democracy, tolerance and freedom of expression, Cotler noted.
“When the crown prince was in Washington, we submitted a legal brief to him based on Islamic law as well as Saudi Arabian law where we said his own legal system mandated the release of Raif Badawi,” Cotler said.
Rotrand said he hoped other cities would follow suit to bolster the global movement to free Badawi.
Haidar was accepted as a refugee by Quebec and Canada with her children and will become a Canadian citizen on Friday.
Since his imprisonment in 2012, Badawi has received many awards, including the Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament, honorary membership in PEN International, and the Press Freedom Prize by Reporters Without Borders.
In 2015, Montreal city council called on the federal government to intervene on Badawi’s behalf with the Saudi government.