Mammoth hissy fit
Saudi Arabia hopes to put an end to all human rights criticism
It’s been a decade since Raif Badawi was first briefly detained in 2008 in Saudi Arabia on nonsense charges of apostasy and insulting Islam ... all because he blogged his liberal opinions online.
The charges were clearly meant as a warning to tell this then twenty-something to keep quiet. But he didn’t listen.
So several years later, in 2012, when he was arrested again on similar charges, they opted to keep him locked up. And that’s where he’s been ever since. Over the past six years, Badawi has appeared before multiple courts and was sentenced to 10 years in prison as well as 1,000 lashes (he’s thankfully only received 50).
Soon after, Badawi’s wife Ensaf Haidar made her way to Canada, where she has been a prominent voice not just in her husband’s case but in supporting freedom of expression and opposing extremism wherever she finds it.
This is the background to the flare-up in Canada-Saudi Arabia relations that’s been unfolding the past few days.
Raif ’s sister Samar Badawi is also a human rights activist, having spoken out against regressive Saudi policies such as the male guardianship system and the prohibition of female drivers. Like her brother, Samar had been arrested before and her latest one came last week on July 31.
It’s this development that pushed us to where we’re at now, with Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland posting to social media last week: “Very alarmed to learn that Samar Badawi, Raif Badawi’s sister, has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. Canada stands together with the Badawi family in this difficult time, and we continue to strongly call for the release of both Raif and Samar Badawi.”
That’s all it supposedly took for Saudi Arabia to sever relations with Canada — recalling their diplomats, booting ours, pausing business deals and air travel and calling back 12,000 of their students currently studying at our universities and colleges.
The whole thing is a bunch of nonsense. And the Saudis know it.
There is nothing exceptional about Freeland’s tweet. Haidar has had audiences with politicians across the Western world. Everyone from across the political spectrum in Canada is aware of Raif ’s imprisonment, everyone agrees it’s wrong and many have publicly voiced this.
Back in 2015, shortly before the election, Justin Trudeau posted his support for the #FreeRaif campaign, urging Stephen Harper, who was still PM at the time, to do more on this file.
There have been a number of adoring profiles in Western publications in recent years over Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman who has been credited as something of a reformer in recent years, having eased restrictions on female driving.
But MBS — as he’s known — clearly wants to make it clear that as he consolidates power any reforms will be done because he says so, not because of Haidar or Freeland or any other Western voice.
Saudi Arabia’s reaction to Canada is deliberately disproportionate. It’s also absurdly self-centred and flies in the face of typical diplomacy.
Back in 1988 during the Moscow Summit, Ronald Reagan aggressively pushed Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev on human rights issues. Gorbachev didn’t like this, and there were times when Reagan held back so as not to derail the entire summit. But it was ultimately understood that these criticisms were part of the deal.
The leaders of most regimes that have dubious human rights records have become accustomed to hearing complaints from foreign officials. It’s Kabuki theatre for any of them to act to the contrary.
MBS seems to want to make Saudi Arabia exempt from this longstanding practice and is using Canada as the test case. It’s incredibly gutsy, given that even China — which has far more leverage on the world stage than Saudi Arabia – accepts a degree of such criticism from the West.
So what do we do? Freeland’s already made it clear there will be no apology and the occasional criticism will keep coming. And that’s the right response to this hissy fit.