Canada must deal strongly with Saudi Arabia
The world is starting to contemplate action over Khashoggi. Better late than never
Before Jamal Khashoggi, there was Raif Badawi.
Now an honorary citizen of Montreal, whose wife and three children are Canadian citizens residing in Quebec, Badawi had been in prison since 2012 for writing a blog that promoted secularism and democracy in the theocratic monarchy of Saudi Arabia and sometimes criticized the government.
In early 2015, he was publicly flogged, receiving the first 50 of the thousand lashes ordered as part of his 10-year sentence for the crime of “insulting Islam through electronic channels.” This violent punishment sparked worldwide condemnation, but little concrete action.
There is also Samar Badawi, his sister and a noteworthy activist in her own right. A recipient of an International Women of Courage award in 2012, she has pressed for women’s rights in patriarchal Saudi Arabia, protested a previous ban on women driving by getting behind the wheel herself, and took her own father to court for denying her the right to marry the man she wanted.
When Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the Kingdom’s de facto ruler, ended the prohibition on women driving this year — a move that was lauded as a step toward modernization — Samar Badawi and other female dissidents were detained.
A tweet calling for her release by Canadian Global Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland provoked a temper tantrum by Saudi Arabia that ruptured diplomatic, educational and business relations between the two countries. Canada was left standing alone. In the rest of the world it was business as usual.
Saudi Arabia has long had one of the worst human rights records on the planet, but its wealth, oil, lucrative arms contracts and usefulness as a strategic ally in a complicated region has long helped buy the blindness and the silence of world powers. The apparent grisly murder of journalist-inexile Khashoggi by a hit squad of high-level Saudi security officials in the country’s consulate in Turkey, however, seems to be an abuse too far for many Western governments.
Turkish investigators have been leaking horrifying details of the Washington Post columnist’s torture, dismemberment and killing, exposing Riyadh’s preposterous and evolving explanations — that they had no idea what happened to him, wait, no, that he was killed in an interrogation gone awry, er, um, rather he died in a fist fight with rogue agents — as the vast coverup that it is. Now Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogen has personally accused Saudi Arabia of planning the “savage” attack days in advance.
If there was previously any doubt, it is now painfully obvious that the Saudis carried out an extra-judicial execution — and a particularly heinous one at that — against a dissident in one of its embassies on foreign soil. And given his iron grip on power, it seems inconceivable that the crown prince, known by his initials MBS, did not know. That puts them in the company of Russia, North Korea and other rogue regimes.
The international community is now starting to contemplate action to match its revulsion. German Chancellor Angela Merkel halted arms shipments to the Kingdom until the situation has been “cleared up and those responsible held to account.” She is urging Germany’s allies to follow suit.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that his government is “willing ” to suspend shipments of light armoured vehicles to the Kingdom, Canada’s second-biggest arms market, but warned that cancelling the contract could cost $1 billion.
At a bare minimum, Canada should do what Conservative justice critic Tony Clement proposed: use the recently passed Magnitsky Act against those responsible for Khashoggi’s death. The law authorizes Canada to sanction and freeze the assets of foreign actors found responsible for human rights abuses. The act was named for a Russian accountant who was jailed for investigating corruption beaten to death in a Moscow prison in 2009.
Some U.S. Congress members are suggesting a similar response, despite President Donald Trump’s willingness to parrot some of the less credible Saudi excuses for Khashoggi’s disappearance.
Canada, Germany and other like-minded countries should perhaps push for the lifting of travel restrictions on Khashoggi’s family members. His son was summoned to MBS’s “Davos in the Desert” economic shindig Tuesday (which many global officials are boycotting). The palace later released a picture of Salah Khashoggi shaking the Crown Prince’s hand — a prop in a chilling photo op.
If Canada needs more reasons to look at sanctioning the Saudis, there is also the case of Omar Abdulaziz. A dissident granted asylum and living in Sherbrooke, he was a friend of Khashoggi. The day before Khashoggi vanished, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto published a report demonstrating a high probability the Saudi government installed powerful spyware on Abdulaziz’s smartphone capable of listening to his calls, reading his text messages and controlling his camera. Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, said Canada should have some serious questions about this unauthorized surveillance and whether it was used to corner Khashoggi.
If there were ever a time for concerted, global action to bring a ruthless regime to heel for its appalling human rights record, it’s now. After the Badawis, Abdulaziz and Khashoggi, do we need more reasons?