On August 5, Saudi Arabia expelled Canada’s ambassador and announced a decision to freeze new new trade and investment transactions with Toronto.
“We consider the Canadian ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia persona non grata and order him to leave within the next 24 hours,” Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry said on Twitter.
The Saudi ministry added that Riyadh is also recalling its ambassador to Canada.
The move came two days after Canada had publicly criticized the arrest of women’s rights and human rights activists in Saudi Arabia. Global Affairs Canada said in a tweet on August 3:
“Canada is gravely concerned about additional arrests of civil society and women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia, including Samar Badawi. We urge the Saudi authorities to immediately release them and all other peaceful human rights activists.”
The Saudi Foreign Ministry described the Canadian position as “an overt and blatant interference in the internal affairs” of the kingdom.
On August 6, Saudi state airline Saudia said it is suspending flights to and from Toronto.
Samar Badawi is a Saudi Arabian-American human rights activist. Badawi, along with Nassima al-Sadah, were arrested by Saudi authorities on July 30 in the framework of the ongoing crackdown on activists, clerics and journalists criticizing the Saudi regime and the human rights situation in the kingdom.
Since May, more than a dozen women’s rights activists have been targeted. Most of them campaigned for the right to drive and an end to Saudi Arabia’s male guardianship system, which requires women to obtain the consent of a male relative for important decisions.
The real humantiarian, social and political situation in Saudi Arabia as well as the Saudi regime itself are far away from being not “soft” or “free”. However, this does not stop the West, led by the United States, from active cooperation with the kingdom. Riyadh has been for a long time remaining one of Washington’s key allies in the Middle East.