The Senate
Motion to Call Upon the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship to Grant Citizenship to Raif Badawi Adopted
June 3, 2021
Pursuant to notice of March 15, 2021, moved:
That the Senate call upon the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship to grant citizenship to Raif Badawi by exercising his discretion under section 5 of the Citizenship Act, which authorizes him to grant citizenship to any person to alleviate cases of special and unusual hardship.
She said: Honourable senators, I rise tonight to explain why I am moving a motion to call upon the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Marco Mendicino, to grant Canadian citizenship without delay to Saudi Arabian journalist and blogger Raif Badawi, who has been in prison in Saudi Arabia for nine years. The Citizenship Act gives the minister the discretion to grant citizenship to any person to alleviate cases of special and unusual hardship. It’s clear to me that this is indeed a case of special hardship and persecution. However, it is also a case that has undeniable ties to Canada, and to Quebec in particular.
Raif Badawi has been detained in Saudi Arabia for nine years for having insulted Islam. His courageous wife, Ensaf Haidar, and their three children were granted asylum in Canada and have settled in Sherbrooke. They are now Canadian citizens. Thanks to Ms. Haidar’s tireless crusade to free the father of her children, Raif Badawi has become a cause célèbre in Quebec. He has garnered a great deal of sympathy.
What was the crime that has led Raif Badawi to languish in prison for nine years? In 2008, he launched a website called “Free Saudi Liberals.” It advocated in favour of moral liberalization in Saudi Arabia, meaning freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of speech and gender equality. While this would be perfectly legitimate in a democratic country where freedom of speech is respected, it earned him a 10-year prison sentence, 1,000 lashes and a heavy fine for publishing comments that were deemed blasphemous. This totalitarian country, governed by Sharia law, is the birthplace of a fundamentalist form of Islam, Wahhabism, which is being exported around the world.
An international outcry stopped the flogging after 50 lashes, but the subsequent decline in Raif Badawi’s physical and mental health and his hunger strikes have caused concern for his loved ones and his allies, who include the former Canadian minister of justice, Irwin Cotler, one of his staunchest defenders. A global campaign has been launched, punctuated by interventions from the United Nations. There have been many fruitless calls for clemency and for his release, including by former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the U.S. Senate.
In 2018, Canada’s foreign affairs minister at the time, Chrystia Freeland, had the audacity to use Twitter to call for the immediate release of Raif Badawi and his sister, Samar Badawi, a women’s rights advocate who had just been jailed. Her tweet infuriated the Saudi regime and resulted in sanctions against Canada.
Quebec, for its part, delayed Saudi Arabia’s bid for observer status at the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, mainly because of the treatment of Raif Badawi.
Raif Badawi has also become a symbol of resistance. He was awarded the prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2015, an award that honours the memory of the great dissident physician who was persecuted for defying the Soviet dictatorship. When announcing this prize, the President of the European Parliament had this to say about Raif Badawi, and I quote:
Raif Badawi has become a symbol and an inspiration for all those fighting for fundamental rights in the region and beyond. . . . Despite great risk, . . . Raif Badawi has bravely endeavoured to foster free thought and exercised his right to freedom of expression filling a vacuum left by the lack of a free press in his country.
Ensaf Haidar added the following on this occasion:
Raif is not a criminal. He is a writer and a free thinker: that is all. Raif Badawi’s crime is being a free voice in a country which does not accept anything other than a single opinion and a single thought.
The fate of all political prisoners and all prisoners of conscience is important. It calls into question the trade-offs we make in foreign policy between our conscience and our economic comfort. To protect the life of Raif Badawi, wouldn’t it be better to keep silent and take action behind the scenes? “No, no and no,” says Irwin Cotler from the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. “Silence could be disastrous.”
Let’s not forget that Saudi Arabia was involved in the gruesome murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Raif Badawi has also been recognized as a journalist by many reputable international institutions, such as Reporters Without Borders, which presented him with the Press Freedom Award.
Why should we grant Raif Badawi Canadian citizenship? First of all, I am told that Raif Badawi is anxiously looking forward to obtaining Canadian citizenship and has been pleading for it for six years.
Saudi Arabia doesn’t recognize dual citizenship, but under international law, it isn’t forbidden for a country to provide diplomatic protection to a citizen who is a dual national. At least, that is what we read in a recent analysis by the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom, convened at the request of the British and Canadian governments.
Raif Badawi could also try to renounce his Saudi citizenship. If he obtains Canadian citizenship, it gives his defenders a strong argument for allowing him to receive Canadian consular services. For example, as a Canadian citizen, Mr. Badawi could receive visits from Canadian diplomats, and the conditions of his detention might improve. These visits could relieve his mental distress. With a Canadian passport, he could hope for safe passage upon release. Without it, he could not leave Saudi Arabia for 10 years.
Of course, none of this is guaranteed, but that is the hope carried by the motion I am moving today, as well as the hope that three Canadian children who grew up fatherless in their new home country will get their father back. As you know, the other place unanimously adopted a similar motion on January 27. If both chambers make the same request of the Government of Canada, the political pressure will be that much stronger. Unfortunately, so far, the Minister of Immigration has not given any indication that he would take measures in accordance with the unanimous motion of our colleagues in the other place.
We must not delay, because things are taking a worrisome turn in Saudi Arabia. Following the CIA’s latest revelations about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Raif Badawi was reportedly investigated for harming the reputation of the Saudi kingdom. On March 15, Raif Badawi appeared in a criminal court for a new trial on charges that his hunger strike to obtain medicine and books was actually a suicide attempt. Suicide is a crime under Saudi Sharia-based law. He was scheduled to be released in a year, but a new conviction would make that unlikely.
Esteemed colleagues, I ask you to support this humanitarian motion now. Thank you.
Honourable senators, I rise to speak in support of the motion moved by my colleague, Senator Miville-Dechêne, calling on the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Marco Mendicino, to grant citizenship to the Saudi writer and blogger Raif Badawi by exercising his discretion to grant citizenship to any person to alleviate cases of special and unusual hardship. I would add that the House of Commons unanimously adopted a similar motion on January 27.
Mr. Badawi’s saga begins not with his arrest by Saudi authorities in 2012, but rather in 2008 when, at the age of 24, he founded the blog and discussion forum “Free Saudi Liberals” with Souad al-Shammari, a Saudi women’s rights activist. That year, he was arrested, questioned about his website and then released.
He was subsequently accused of creating a website insulting Islam. He then left Saudi Arabia. He returned only after Saudi prosecutors indicated that they were dropping the charges, but that was a trap. In May 2009, his and his wife’s assets in Saudi Arabia were frozen. In December 2009, just as he was about to take a flight to Beirut, he was prohibited from leaving the country, without any explanation.
In March 2012, Sheikh Abdul-Rahman Al-Barrak published a religious ruling, a fatwa, declaring Mr. Badawi an apostate who should be judged and condemned for stating on his site that Muslims, Jews, Christians and atheists are all equal.
After this fatwa, Mr. Badawi’s wife and children fled to Egypt, then settled briefly in Lebanon before applying for political asylum in Canada, which was granted. They then settled in the beautiful Quebec city of Sherbrooke. They are all Canadian citizens now and, my goodness, how actively engaged they are. His wife even wants to run for the Bloc Québécois in the next federal election.
In June 2012, Mr. Badawi was officially arrested and charged with creating a website that undermined “general security,” mocking Islam and committing apostasy, a crime punishable by death in Saudi Arabia. Fortunately, a judge dismissed the charge of apostasy after Mr. Badawi was able to convince the court that he was Muslim.
However, in July 2013, Mr. Badawi was found guilty of the other charges and sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes. In a flagrant violation of international standards for fair trials, Mr. Badawi’s lawyer was prevented from attending the hearing, which is not unlike what happened to the Canadians in China. The lawyer, Waleed Abulkhair, who is also a human rights advocate, would later be locked up and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Mr. Badawi’s sentence was appealed in 2014, but to his shock, it was increased: 10 years in prison; 1,000 lashes to be administered over a period of 20 weeks; a one-million-riyal fine, which was about $300,000 Canadian at the time; a total ban from accessing the Internet; and a ban from leaving Saudi Arabia for 10 years following his release.
At the request of the King of Saudi Arabia, the country’s supreme court reviewed the decision and ultimately upheld it in a January 2015 ruling. Mr. Badawi’s new lawyer was not authorized to intervene during the Supreme Court review.
As you are no doubt aware, flogging is a form of torture that violates international law, and in particular the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which Saudi Arabia ratified in 1997. Furthermore, article 8 of the Arab Charter on Human Rights states that:
(a) The States parties shall protect every person in their territory from being subjected to physical or mental torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
This charter was also ratified by Saudi Arabia.
In response, Saudi Arabia has stated that the prohibition of torture, under the Arab Charter on Human Rights and international law, does not apply to convictions under Sharia law. That said, we should be pleased that flogging was finally abolished in Saudi Arabia in 2020, which I consider to be a step in the right direction for the governance of that kingdom. I would like to point out that Mr. Badawi had already received several dozen lashes when flogging was abolished.
However, the fact remains that Raif Badawi’s situation is unacceptable and has caused much outrage, leading to calls for clemency in Quebec, Canada and around the world. The list of Mr. Badawi’s accolades includes a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015, the Freedom of Speech Award, the Courage Award from the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy in 2015, and finally, an honorary doctorate from Université de Sherbrooke in 2017.
These recognitions have not gone unnoticed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In early March 2021, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, who is working on the file, informed us that Mr. Badawi and his wife, Ensaf Haidar, are both under investigation for “influencing public opinion” and “damaging the reputation of the Kingdom.”
In an article published in the now defunct “HuffPost,” the Honourable Irwin Cotler, former minister of Justice, Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and legal counsel for Mr. Badawi, explained the following:
When Minister Dion last raised Mr. Badawi’s case with Saudi officials, they emphasized his lack of Canadian citizenship as precluding Canada from intervening on his behalf. As someone who has represented political prisoners for some 40 years in such diverse jurisdictions as the Former Soviet Union —
— Mr. Cotler was then acting for Andrei Sakharov, then in Egypt for Saad Eddin Ibrahim, then in South Africa for no less than Nelson Mandela, and now he represents Raif Badawi. He said:
. . . this is the first time any country has questioned my right — and that of Canada — to make representations on behalf of a political prisoner because that political prisoner was not a citizen of Canada.
Mr. Badawi was granted honorary citizenship by the City of Sherbrooke in 2015 and by the City of Montreal in 2018, but he is still missing the one that counts, true Canadian citizenship. The fact that he does not have Canadian citizenship is a barrier to any intervention by our country in this case and keeps us from providing any consular services to Mr. Badawi.
Consequently, even though Canadian citizenship would certainly not overturn Mr. Badawi’s conviction or the ban preventing him from leaving Saudi Arabia for 10 years after his detention, it would give Canada the opportunity to intervene. That is why I invite you to support the motion, honourable colleagues. Thank you.
Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
(Motion agreed to.)
