AUGUST 8, 2018
Saudi Arabia, under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is cutting off trade with Canada to deter criticism from Western countries. (Photo Credits: Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Saudi Arabia took concrete steps to disengage economically from Canada on Wednesday, escalating the feud over Canada’s criticism of Saudi Arabia and demonstrating that its expulsion of the Canadian ambassador this week was more than a symbolic protest.
The kingdom announced on Wednesday that it would no longer send its citizens to Canadian hospitals and would withdraw resident physicians from Canadian hospitals.
It has also said that it would suspend flights by Saudia, the national carrier, to Canadian airports starting Monday and informed traders that it would not buy Canadian barley or wheat.
The measures came in response to two tweets by Canada’s Foreign Ministry last week calling on Saudi Arabia to immediately release imprisoned rights activists, including two who have family in Canada.
The Saudi government responded on Monday by expelling the Canadian ambassador to Riyadh, Dennis Horak, recalling the Saudi ambassador to Ottawa and freezing all new trade and investment deals with Canada. It also said it would transfer thousands of Saudi students who were studying in Canada to schools in other countries.
The unusually strong reaction shows that Saudi Arabia, under the day-to-day leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 32, is willing to wield its wealth to deter Western countries from criticizing how its absolute monarchy is run.
Prince Mohammed, who has emerged as the kingdom’s most dynamic official since his father, King Salman, assumed the throne in 2015, has made similar moves against Sweden and Germany in response to criticism.
The United States, which has strong diplomatic and economic ties with both countries, has taken a neutral posture on the dispute.
“Both sides need to diplomatically resolve this together,” the State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters on Tuesday. “We can’t do it for them; they need to resolve it together.”
She encouraged Saudi Arabia to “respect due process and publicize information on some of its legal cases.”
The State Department, in its annual Human Rights Report, has frequently criticized Saudi Arabia on similar grounds to those stated by Canada. The latest edition accuses the kingdom of holding political prisoners, conducting executions without due process, and practicing the “arbitrary arrest and detention” of lawyers, human rights activists and government critics.
The Canadian government referred specifically to the case of Samar Badawi, a longtime women’s rights activist who was jailed last week at the same time as a colleague, Nassima al-Sadah. A tweet by Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland also referred to Ms. Badawi’s brother, Raif Badawi, a blogger who was imprisoned and publicly caned for running a liberal website.
For now, both sides appear to be sticking to their positions.
“We are going to lead with our values,” Canada’s finance minister, Bill Morneau, said on Tuesday. “It’s important that we bring Canadian values around the world, and we are going to continue to enunciate what we believe are the appropriate ways of dealing with citizens.”
Saudi Arabia has continued to call the Canadian criticism an unjustified intervention in its internal affairs, and Saudi-owned television stations have aired content aimed at tarnishing the image of Canada.
In Riyadh, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told reporters on Wednesday that mediation in the dispute was not possible and that Canada needed to “fix its big mistake.”
“There is nothing to mediate,” he said. “A mistake has been made and a mistake should be corrected.”
He said the kingdom was considering unspecified “additional measures” against Canada.
On Wednesday, the Saudi state news agency said the kingdom was no longer sending patients to Canadian hospitals. It was not immediately clear how many Saudi patients are in Canada, but many Saudis have surgery and other complicated treatments abroad, often paid for by their government.
The decision will affect approximately 800 Saudi medical students working as residents or fellows in hospitals around the country, including more than 200 at the University of Toronto.
They have been told they have until the end of the month to leave the country, according to Dr. Salvatore Spadafora, a vice dean at the University of Toronto’s faculty of medicine. “We are hopeful the situation can be resolved,” he said.
On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia informed grain traders in Europe that it would no longer accept “milling wheat or feed barley of Canadian origin,” according to Reuters news agency.
In 2017, Canada sold 66,000 tons of wheat, excluding durum, and 132,000 tons of barley to Saudi Arabia, according to Canadian government statistics.
While the Saudi sanctions may touch individual sectors, they will not have a great impact on the overall Canadian economy, analysts say.
The countries do about $4 billion per year in bilateral trade. In 2017, Canadian exports to Saudi Arabia totaled $1.1 billion, a fraction of a percent of Canada’s total exports.
A few countries, including Bahrain and Egypt, have stated their support for Saudi Arabia’s position, but without announcing concrete steps of their own.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its Facebook page that it was “concerned” about the split between Canada and Saudi Arabia, which it blamed on international powers “meddling in the internal affairs of countries in the region.”
Courtesy/Source: NY Times
