Raif Badawi, Human Rights Activist, Political Prisoner, Saudi Arabia
"They add insult to injury to a long list of oppressive and aggressive acts against him."
"It is difficult to discern, given the opacity of the Saudi Arabian system, what practical impacts [these investigations] will have. But it's certainly very negative."
"[At the very least], it's an attempt to silence the family."
Brandon Silver, director of policies and projects, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights
"There are a number of distinctive Canadian connections given that his wife and children are Canadian citizens."
"We feel that his case is now a kind of cause celebre with respect to so many different human rights themes."
Irwin Cotler, former Member of Parliament, international counsel, Raif Badawi
Members of Parliament are calling on the immigration minister to grant Canadian citizenship to the jailed Saudi blogger. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)
The world was aghast when a slight young man of Saudi Arabian descent was arrested in Saudi Arabia and charged with insulting Islam, back in 2012. He had expressed enlightened, liberal sentiments on his blog. And that sent Saudi thought-minders into an incoherent rage of spite. Raif Badawi has occupied a prison cell since June of 2012 in Saudi Arabia. Part of his punishment aside from prison was to be lashed a thousand times.
He did undergo the grotesque punishment of receiving 50 lashes before collapsing. International reaction was so condemning that Saudi authorities tucked him away in prison -- the lashes to continue at some future date. He had committed the unspeakable offence of 'insulting Islam through electronic channels'.
His wife, Ensaf Haidar, lives in Canada. She is a proud Canadian citizen, her home in Quebec City. She has traveled extensively over the years, campaigning, speaking in public, drawing attention to her husband's incarceration in an effort to muster world opinion to exert pressure on Saudi Arabia to free her husband. Their three children are growing; eight years' absence makes an incredible difference in children's lives, yearning for a father they haven't seen much less hugged and been present in their lives during their formative years.
Ensaf Haidar, Raif Badawi's wife, is only allowed two telephone conversations per week with her husband. (Sylvia Thomson/CBC)
Several years ago, Raif Badawi's sister, Samar Badawi was also arrested, charged and imprisoned for illegal activities. She was protesting the condition of women living in a strictly-observant Islamic society known for its Wahhabi orthodoxy where women are treated as not very intelligent chattels. Raif Badawi's lawyer, Waleed Abulkhair has also been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for his unmitigated gall in supporting his client.
It seems that the vigour and determination of Ensaf Haidar in alerting the world community of the barbarity of shutting away a young husband and father of young children for years on end, as a cruel and unusual human rights abuse by a repressive tyranny is tarnishing the reputation of the kingdom. Of course, in reality, it is the reputation that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has itself earned for its repressive, discriminatory laws and reactive oppression to its internal critics.
The Saudi regime has seen fit now to launch a new investigation against Mr. Badawi, for allegedly harming the country's reputation. That, of course, extends to the activities of his wife, Ensaf Haidar who sees her activism as the only way she may be able to move the Saudi authorities to eventually releasing her husband. His prison term in fact, is close to elapsing, a full decade of incarceration, when he should be released. The additional charge is a threat.
Saudi Arabian authorities appear as well to be 'investigating' Ensaf Haidar. Her activities displease them mightily, smearing the Saudi Kingdom as a vengeful, repressive oppressor of free thought. The move is meant to place pressure on her not to continue her dedicated measures to alert the international community to her husband's and her sister-in-law's plight; in so much as saying that should she continue, her husband's sentence will be extended under the new 'charges'.
As it happens, the Saudi authorities are harassing a Canadian citizen. They are also, in effect, holding another Canadian citizen in prison unjustifiably. In January of 2021 the House of Commons voted unanimously to confer Canadian citizenship on the long-suffering Raif Badawi.
A 2015 protest in support of Raif Badawi outside the Saudi Arabian embassy in Berlin, Germany.Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images
Tawdry Headline Grabbing Spectacle : Liberal Special
"I'm Rahaf Mohmed, formally seeking a refugee status to any country that would protect me from getting harmed or killed due to leaving my religion and torture from my family [sic]." Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, Twitter, January 6
"Ultimately it boiled down to an issue of timing in the end." "Canada was able to guarantee and certify that they could handle this quite swiftly, and that's why Rahaf was brought to Canada." Lauren La Rose, spokesperson, UNHCR Canada
"We believe very strongly that women's rights are human rights. The oppression of women is not a problem that can be resolved in a day. But rather than cursing the darkness, we really believe -- I believe -- in lighting a single candle." "And where we can save a single person, where we can save a single woman, that's a good thing to do." Chrystia Freeland, Foreign Affairs Minister
Saudi woman Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, centre, stands with Canadian
Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, right, as she arrives at
Toronto Pearson International Airport, on Saturday, January 12, 2019.THE
CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Well, that was quite the whirlwind of a young woman's plight that entered the public scene through a few Twitter posts by an anxious teen. Her appeal for attention and help to resolve her runaway dilemma was hugely successful. That she's a Saudi national, where women and girls are strictly chaperoned in public and only recently been permitted to drive vehicles captured a lot of attention to begin with. She comes from a culture where women traditionally wear black chadors covering their bodies, niqabs covering all but their eyes. Saudi women cannot travel abroad without their male guardians' permission, nor open bank accounts.
Critics of the Kingdom and its governance can quickly find their way into notorious prison interiors. As did Raif Badawi, a blogger critical of the human rights record of his native country. For which assault against his nation's reputation he was consigned to a long imprisonment and a punishment of 1,000 lashes for good measure. The first lashes administered to him several years ago almost killed the frail young man. He still languishes in a Saudi prison as his wife agitates for his release from her home in Quebec, as a Canadian citizen.
It was his wife, in fact, Ensaf Haidar, who was one of the first to draw attention to the plight of 18-year-old Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, alerting her many Twitter followers, picking up momentum on a campaign to have the girl protected so she wouldn't be forced to return against her will to Saudi Arabia and to her family which she claims have abused her and whom she claims to fear might kill her for repudiating Islam and running off to the West. Ms. Haidar took it upon herself to contact the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa, urging Canada to give Ms. Alqunun haven.
And what a splendid opportunity that turned out to be for the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, the prime minister who defends illegal entry to Canada as a boon for Canadian employers having difficulty finding enough workers to fill various employment categories. Trudeau has described illegal migrants entering Canada outside official ports of entry as prospective citizens, making light of their illegal entry. Canada has a robust policy of accepting an average of a quarter-million immigrants yearly.
The process however, is geared toward benefiting Canada with the presence of educated people capable of finding a place for themselves in society among an evolving, highly-educated workforce. There are more university graduates in Canada than any other developed country of the world. Canada is a country whose backbone is that of immigration and always has been. But those who wish to emigrate from a country of birth to Canada must do so fairly, through established legal channels.
Canada hasn't shirked in accepting its ration as a developed country of refugees. The situation with this young Saudi woman seeking haven has been a heaven-sent opportunity for Trudeau and his Liberals; once again touting their bona fides as 'feminists', supporters of women's rights and prepared where other countries hesitate, to clasp a fearful young woman to the Liberal bosom. The photo opportunity to greet the entry of Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun into Canada on a flight from Seoul was irresistible.
So there was the Minister of Global Affairs (Foreign Affairs) not too busy to grab the opportunity to gush with self-importance, greet the new arrival at the airport, to take her under the concerned wing of a Minister of the Crown, to espouse in the process the commitment of the (Liberal) Government of Canada to women's rights and defence of the vulnerable, all the while ensuring that upstarts like Ensaf Haidar and journalist Tarek Fatah, both of whom had mounted media campaigns for the young woman's rescue, were kept a distance from Chrystia Freeland's prize.
Rahaf Mohammed, formerly Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, poses at COSTI (Immigrant Services) offices on College St. in Toronto on Jan. 14, 2019. (Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star)
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
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