Unable to bear Ottawa’s foreign ministry rebuking Riyadh for jailing human rights activists, Saudi Arabia on Monday expelled Canada’s ambassador due to the alleged interference.
Canadian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Dennis Horak was given an ultimatum of 24 hours to leave the kingdom, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Monday.
Days after Canada called for the immediate release of rights campaigners who were detained during a recent wave of arrests in Saudi Arabia which included relatives of naturalized Canadian citizens.
In a tit for a tat, Saudi Arabia too suspended deals worth billions of dollars and recalled its envoy to Canada.
The Kingdom’s ministry of foreign affairs asserted that Canada’s actions were an affront that required a sharp response.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has never accepted any interference in its domestic affairs by – or orders from – any country,” SPA quoted the ministry as saying.
When asked to comment over the issue, a staff member in the Canadian embassy declined to comment by saying that it did not have enough information to make a formal statement.
“[But] we are aware of this situation and for business and embassy work, we are continuing to operate as usual,” the staff member, who refused to be identified, said.
Last week, the Canada’s ministry of foreign affairs tweeted that it was “gravely concerned” over the issue of rights activists detention in the kingdom including that of Samar Badawi.
Samar is the sister of a prominent human rights campaigner, Raif Badawi, sentenced to 10 years in prison in the year 2014 over the charges of insulting Islam. His wife and children are naturalized Canadian citizens.
The statement from the ministry was made a day after Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs sought for both the members to be released.
“Canada stands together with the Badawi family in this difficult time,” Freeland said.
A month ago Samar Badawi and fellow activist Nassima al-Sadah were arrested by the Saudi Kingdom.
Both of them raised their voices for women’s right to drive resulting in the granting of the right by the Saudi government ending a decades old ban in June, along with abolishing the male guardianship system.
Many a dozen female activists have been targeted by authorities in Saudi Arabia since May, in what Human Rights groups have termed as an “unrelenting crackdown on the women’s rights movement”.
According to Hassan Yari, a professor of international relations at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, Riyadh’s response to Ottawa’s criticism marked a “significant interruption” in relations between the two countries.
“This [rift] is going to affect trade and exchange between Canada and Saudi Arabia,” Yari said.
Bilateral trade between the two countries made up to about $4bn and more than 15,000 Saudi students attend Canadian universities.
A part of the trade includes Canada’s export of military vehicles armed with high-powered weaponry. The deal invited much criticism to the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government for making due to Saudi’s bad human rights record.
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