Freeland not backing down in Saudi dispute
HUMAN RIGHTS CRITICISM PROMPTS EXPULSION OF AMBASSADOR, HALT TO TRADE DEALS
Canada’s Foreign Affairs minister didn’t retreat Monday in her defence of human rights after Saudi Arabia froze new trade deals and expelled the country’s ambassador in retaliation for Ottawa’s call to free Saudi activists.
In her first public response to Saudi Arabia’s actions, Chrystia Freeland said “Canada will always stand up for human rights in Canada and around the world, and women’s rights are human rights.”
She said it’s “premature” to comment on the status of Canada’s arms deal with Saudi Arabia or the economic consequences of the move, adding that she’s waiting for more specifics from the country. Saudi Arabia ordered the expulsion on Monday of the Canadian ambassador and the halting of all new trade and investment deals between the two countries after the Canadian government said it was “gravely concerned” about the recent arrests of Saudi civil society and women’s rights activists. The move could threaten Canada’s $15-billion arms deal that includes providing armoured vehicles to the country.
In a statement issued early Monday, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry said Ambassador Dennis Horak was persona non grata and gave him 24 hours to leave the country, adding that it would be recalling its own envoy to Ottawa for further consultations and retained “its right to take further action.”
Freeland would only tell reporters that the Canadian ambassador is “fine” and would not disclose his location.
“Any further step from the Canadian side in that direction will be considered as acknowledgment of our right to interfere in Canadian domestic affairs,” the Foreign Ministry said. “Canada and all other nations need to know that they can’t claim to be more concerned than the kingdom over its own citizens.”
Saudi state television later reported that the Education Ministry was coming up with an “urgent plan” to move thousands of Saudi scholarship students out of Canadian schools to take classes in other countries. The Saudi state airline, Saudia, said in a statement on its official Twitter account that it would suspend all flights to Toronto starting Aug. 13.
Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have publicly backed Saudi Arabia.
The unusually heated dispute between the two governments was the latest international fallout from Saudi Arabia’s domestic crackdown on perceived dissenters, including the arrests of its most prominent women’s rights activists.
Since May, Saudi authorities have detained more than a dozen of the activists, accusing some of illegal contact with foreign entities while branding them as traitors in the local press. Some of the activists had campaigned for decades to allow Saudi women the right to drive — and were rounded up in the weeks before the Saudi government lifted the driving ban.
Two more activists were arrested last week, according to human rights advocates, including Samar Badawi, the sister of dissident blogger Raif Badawi who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in jail in Saudi Arabia for “insulting Islam through electronic channels.” His wife, Ensaf Haidar, and their three children became Canadian citizens on Canada Day last month and live in Quebec.
Freeland said in tweet Aug. 2 that she was “very alarmed” to learn of Samar’s arrest and that the government would “continue to strongly call for the release of both Raif and Samar Badawi.”
The next day, the main Twitter account for Canada’s Foreign Ministry said that “Canada is gravely concerned about additional arrests of civil society and women’s rights activists in #SaudiArabia, including Samar Badawi” and called on Saudi authorities to “immediately release them.”
The Saudi ministry described Canada’s criticism of the arrests as “blatant interference in the kingdom’s domestic affairs, against basic international norms and all international protocols” and a “major, unacceptable affront to the kingdom’s laws and judicial process, as well as a violation of the kingdom’s sovereignty.”
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has led a drive to reform his country by diversifying its economy, lifting some social restrictions while curbing the influence of the oncepowerful “religious police” who enforced austere moral codes. The changes, though, have been accompanied by a steady drumbeat of repression, including the arrest of popular clerics, prominent business executives and the women’s rights advocates — sending a message, analysts said, that the reforms do not include a sliver of tolerance for political expression.
Saudi Arabia is Canada’s second-largest export market in the Gulf region and Canadian exports to the kingdom exceeded $1.4 billion in 2017, according to Statistics Canada data.
The overwhelming majority of its exports to Saudi Arabia are in vehicles and equipment, which included a controversial $15 billion deal to sell more than 900 light armoured vehicles to the Saudis.
The agreement, struck in 2014 by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was heavily criticized by civil rights groups who said that the deal was opaque and feared that the weapons would be used to carry out human rights abuses.
Justin Trudeau, Harper’s successor, gave the deal the green light in the spring of 2016 when his government began issuing export permits, arguing that he had little choice but to respect contracts signed by the previous government.
Freeland said in February that her department’s investigation into reports that Saudi Arabia was using Canadianmade arms to perpetrate human rights violations turned up “no conclusive evidence” to support those claims.
In a sign of possible further diplomatic tensions, a top official from the United Arab Emirates — a close Saudi ally — said the country stands with Riyadh. A tweet by the UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, expressed support for Saudi Arabia “in defending its sovereignty,” but did not indicate any moves by the UAE against Canada.
The sudden and unexpected dispute bore the hallmarks of bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s 32-year-old future leader, whose recent foreign policy exploits include the war in Yemen, the boycott of Qatar and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s surprise resignation broadcast during a visit to the kingdom. Hariri later rescinded the resignation, widely believed to be orchestrated by Riyadh, and returned to Beirut.