In a world of acute uncertainty, the near collapse of the current international order, and increasingly steady erosion of basic democratic values that defined the second half of the twentieth century, old alignments are failing and new ones are shaky.
It is against this backdrop that we should view the current feud between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Canada, which is perhaps one of the last remaining countries on earth with the balls to call a spade a spade.
Riyadh drew daggers at Canada by recalling its envoy to Canada while ordering the Canadian ambassador to Saudi Arabia to leave within 24 hours in an undiplomatic bickering foisted by intolerance. The move was triggered by Chrystia Freeland’s expression of concerns for human rights abuses by Riyadh.
Freedland, who is the current Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, is also a writer and journalist who has previously held a number of editorial positions at the Financial Times, The Globe, Mail and Thomson Reuters, as well as written op-eds for leading newspapers like New York Times. And so, she has cut her teeth in global news reporting and the human rights arena. She is also the author of a book titled “Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else” published in 2012, among other works.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
It is a dramatic insult to Riyadh, for a woman of her intelligence and candor to attempt to checkmate or call it to order.
In rapid succession, the Arabian nation also announced the freezing of any new trade and investment deals with Canada, went ahead to order all students of Saudi origin studying in Canada to vacate the country and move to another countries, instructed its central bank and pension funds to discard Canadian financial assets even they would be at a loss; and that is aside from banning importation of Canadian wheat and barley.
But this could all go away if only Canada would apologise, according to the demands of the government of the Middle Eastern country.
To this, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has categorically stated he would continue to stand up for Canadian values and universal values and human rights, refusing to render an apology. He also said that his government “will continue to speak firmly and strongly on human rights around the world wherever we see the need.”
Trudeau
It is of note nevertheless, that Saudi Arabia’s recent arrest and detention of women’s rights activists, includes someone who has family relation in Canada. And it is in person of Samar Badawi, Raif Badawi’s sister.
Raif Badawi, whose wife is a Canadian citizen, is a Saudi blogger, author and activist who has been imprisoned himself with 1000 lashes, 10 years of incarceration, and hefty fine hanging over his head, for expressing views different from the authorised position of the Saudi autocratic administration. One of his works, titled “1000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think”, was published in Vancouver in 2015.
Saudi Arabia which only officially abolished slavery in 1962, two years after Nigeria’s political independence, is still a toddler in the human rights arena. The country has consistently topped the charts in the “worst of the worst” in the some of the leading surveys of human and political rights in the world.
It is a nation of extreme religious intolerance where people could be sentenced to between ten to twenty years of imprisonment coupled with multiple thousands of lashes for merely joking about their romantic exploits on TV as in the case of Mazen Abdul-Jawad in 2009, even though commercial sexual exploitation is still rampant in the enclave.
It was only in July 2015, that Waleed Abulkhair, a leading human rights lawyer, and founder of Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia got sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment on trumped up charges. In the same year, Ashraf Fayadh, a Palestinian poet and contemporary artist, was sentenced to death, accused of promoting atheism in his poetry book published in 2008.
In a nation where women are seen as toys and effectively as second class citizens, it is remarkable that as recent as 2013, Saudi Arabia registered its first female trainee lawyer, in person of Arwa al-Hujaili and in 2017, a royal decree was released to grant women the right to drive a motor vehicle, the first royal decree of its kind in human history.
For these outstanding feats in the twenty-first century, Saudi Arabia should be praised. There is no other choice than to hail them for these steps.
But had Canada apologised to Riyadh in this current bitter quarrel, it would have been a sad day for the global human rights community.
Trudeau
Had Canada apologised to Saudi Arabia, it would have been a historically horrendous day for press freedom and freedom of expression, now that Canada is perhaps the lone voice for freedom and human rights still standing today.
For a pot of porridge, America is sealing its lips in order to protect the hundreds of billions of dollars it hopes to reap from Arabian oil money. The only lukewarm response came from a state department low level official who said the two nations should sort themselves out of the squabble.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the biggest weapons buyer in the world; and since the arms importation mostly come from Western countries such as the U. S., U. K. and France, that explains in part why the traditional allies of Canada are not forceful enough on Riyadh on human rights issues.
Trudeau
The worship of petrol dollars has overran the global push for the respect of human rights in this instance. This is the more reason why Canada should be hugely lauded by taking the bulls by the horns and doing the needful at this time.
And it is natural under the circumstance for a lone voice to feel distressed, left in the lurch. But not Trudeau. He said, with regard to Canada’s allies: “I am never going to impose on another country what their response or reaction should be. I respect the rights of other countries to speak for themselves.”
For Canada, it has carved itself out as a new leading voice for freedom.
Trudeau
