Montreal grants honorary citizenship to jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi
The City of Montreal made Saudi blogger Raif Badawi an honorary citizen on Monday, voting unanimously to award the distinction to the father of three who has been languishing in jail for nearly six years.
A ceremony attended by Mayor Valerie Plante took place without the blogger’s wife present.
Plante explained a scheduling snafu prevented Ensaf Haidar from attending the brief ceremony, but Haidar was in the spectators’ gallery later when councillors voted to grant the citizenship.
Coun. Marvin Rotrand, who had presented the motion alongside the opposition Ensemble Montreal, said he is hopeful the vote will carry the weight necessary to get other cities to add their support and keep up pressure to get Badawi freed.
Rotrand said he has also received assurances the provincial and federal governments would ratchet up the pressure.
“We want Saudi Arabia to know we are not going away, that there will be a political cost and an ongoing cost and the movement is not going to die out but grow larger over time,” Rotrand told a news conference. Ensaf Haidar stands next to a poster of a book of articles written by the imprisoned Saudi blogger and Haidar’s husband, Raif Badawi, on June 16, 2015, in Montreal. Montreal city council is expected to debate a resolution today to have jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi named an honorary Montreal citizen.
Montreal wouldn’t be the first Quebec jurisdiction to grant Badawi the distinction - Sherbrooke, where his wife Ensaf Haidar and children have lived for the past few years, and the Montreal suburb of Hampstead have done the same.
Badawi, who is not a Canadian citizen, was jailed in 2012 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, 1,000 lashes and fined the equivalent of $300,000 for criticizing Saudi Arabian clerics.
He received 50 of them in January 2015 during a public flogging
but is not believed to have received any since then.
Badawi’s sentence has drawn widespread international condemnation, and Amnesty International has called on successive federal governments to do more to free him.
Former federal justice minister Irwin Cotler, on hand for Monday’s announcement, said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised the matter directly with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and sought clemency and a pardon for Badawi in April.