Le ministre canadien des Affaire$ étrange$ et la terreur saoudienne

Le Ministre des Affaires étrangères John Baird à Riyadh, en Arabie Saoudite le 20 Mars 2012. DFATD Photo.

L’article ci-dessous a été publié il y a un an sur notre site : nous venions de recevoir Mère Agnès-Mariam de la Croix, une courageuse syrienne engagée dans de dangereuses missions de médiation pour sauver les civils de son pays massacrés d’un côté par les policiers de Bachar el-Assad et de l’autre, par les islamistes armés notamment par l’Arabie Saoudite, le Qatar et la Turquie. Ces pays sunnites recevaient l’appui sans vergogne de la France, des USA, de la Grande-Bretagne et même du Canada. La conférence de presse que nous avons présidée en décembre 2013 a reçu des menaces de mort qui ont provoqué son déplacement à la dernière minute et nous remercions encore mon collègue Gérald Larose pour l’accueil des bureaux de la CSN : il a permis à MAM de se voir interviewée par Azeb Wolde-Gheorghis de RDI et François Bugingo de TVA et de rétablir ainsi en partie dans le monde francophone sa réputation salie entre autres par Bernard Henri-Lévy qui ne lui pardonne pas les origines palestiniennes de son père.

Les Artistes pour la Paix ont dénoncé l’incroyable inconscience du gouvernement conservateur, semblable à celle des USA armant les Talibans contre le gouvernement afghan des années 90. Nos dénonciations n’ont trouvé aucun écho dans nos médias en 2012-13. C’est ainsi que l’Occident a appris bien tard que l’Armée Islamiste (cette appellation apparue dans nos journaux il y a à peine neuf ou dix mois) s’avérait un redoutable cancer qui allait s’étendre non seulement en Irak mais aussi au Yémen (où l’un des tueurs parisiens du 7 janvier a reçu sa « mission » d’Al-Qeida), au Cameroun, au Nigéria et au Soudan avec les islamistes de Boko Haram. Ces derniers ont ramassé les armes laissées derrière la désastreuse campagne militarisée de l’OTAN contre Kaddhafi en Libye : l’OTAN armée à coups de milliards de $ a bombardé et laissé derrière des ruines, ce qui a favorisé le développement de l’anarchie violente, car les mouvements démocratiques, eux, ne sont pas financés.

Grâce à la campagne d’Amnistie Internationale #jesuisRaif, le jeune blogueur saoudien critique du manque de liberté de son pays, Raïf Badawi,  dont la femme et les enfants résident à Sherbrooke, reçoit un appui international, entre autres du haut-commissaire de l’ONU aux Droits de l’Homme, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein qui dénonce la flagellation entreprise contre le jeune homme comme « un châtiment cruel et inhumain, une torture interdite par la Convention contre la torture que même l’Arabie saoudite a ratifiée ». Rima Elkouri (La Presse, 16 janvier) critique sans appel le gouvernement saoudien qui se joignait dimanche à la grande marche de solidarité envers Charlie-Hebdo pour défendre la liberté d’expression, alors qu’il torturait Raïf Badawi pour l’avoir encouragée dans son blog.

Son toute jeune garçon écrit : « papa, tu es en prison loin de moi parce que tu t’es battu pour tes idées. Tu es une personne pacifique qui aime les gens et leur souhaite de bonnes choses. Pourquoi es-tu en prison, papa? C’est la question que je me pose chaque jour. Nous attendons le jour où ton avion arrivera à l’aéroport de Montréal. Tu me verras qui t’attends et qui pleure. Je n’arrêterai pas tant que tu ne me prendras pas dans tes bras et sécheras mes larmes. »

Aux dernières nouvelles, les pressions internationales (et le ministre John Baird?) réussissaient à au moins suspendre la 2e sentence, donc les 50 autres coups de fouet prévus aujourd’hui. Mais entretemps, l’aide canadienne à l’Arabie Saoudite et les « missions » des CF-18 en Irak-Syrie continuent à alourdir le bilan de trois cent mille tués en Syrie. Voilà hélas la conception canadienne de la paix.

Nous reproduisons ici l’article tel que publié sur notre site il y a onze mois: Informés par un article de Carl Meyer dans Embassy news du 26 février 2014, nous voilà catastrophés par la nouvelle politique d’Affaire$ étrange$ du Canada, telle que reflétée par les larges sourires des ministres présents à la Conférence d’Ottawa sur la Défense et la Sécurité des 20 et 21 février derniers. Ken Yamashita, président de l’industrie d’armement General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada, s’est réjoui alors d’un contrat d’au moins 10 milliards de dollars pour la livraison de véhicules blindés à l’Arabie Saoudite, évalué avec une satisfaction béate par le ministre du Commerce Ed Fast à 3000 emplois annuels canadiens sur 14 ans. Pourtant, même Jean Charest souleva quelques objections mineures sur la nature de l’usage de ces véhicules militaires blindés, vite balayées du revers de la main par lui-même (flip-flop Charest), par l’ex-colonel Alain Pellerin représentant l’industrie militaire et par les ministres conservateurs présents.

Car Human Rights’ Watch craint que de tels véhicules aient pour fonction d’écraser des rébellions au Bahrein (voir 2011) et éventuellement en Arabie saoudite. Rappelons que ce pays est le dernier (no 193 à l’ONU!!!) au monde pour les droits des femmes et parmi les derniers pour les droits des homosexuels (LGBT), ainsi que pour le droit d’exercer une religion autre (que wahhabie); enfin, toute opposition à la royauté et aux pouvoirs y est formellement interdite. Bref, un autre attentat conservateur en répression du progrès démocratique. On sait que nos amies les Raging grannies ou mémés déchaînées avaient l’habitude de piqueter l’entrée de cette conférence annuelle (voir avant-dernier film de notre regretté ami  Magnus Isaacson).

Les articles suivants offrent quelques précisions:

Canada’s $10 billion military trade deal with Saudi Arabia exposes blatant hypocracy from the Conservatives, argues Derrick O’Keefe. The biggest manufacturing export deal in Canadian history, announced last week, will supply military hardware to one of the most repressive regimes in the world. It’s been dismaying, although not too surprising, to see the lack of debate about the $10 billion agreement which will see London, Ontario based General Dynamics produce a fleet of armoured vehicles for Saudi Arabia. Actually, to say there’s been a lack of debate is an understatement. One week after the agreement was announced, there has not yet been a single editorial critical of this deal in a major media outlet in Canada. This silence needs to be broken.

The federal government’s Trade Minister, Ed Fast, presented the deal as a triumph of diplomacy. The Conservatives have downgraded talk of human rights and aid in favour of more explicit economic focus to foreign policy matters, a posture they have branded as their Global Markets Action Plan. As Fast explained, “Our government will continue to support our exporters and manufacturers to create jobs, as part of our government’s most ambitious pro-trade, pro-export plan in Canadian history.”

The government claims the export deal will mean 3,000 jobs per year, with overall economic benefits spread out over 500 Canadian businesses. (Military-industrial production and supply chains, as we saw with the F-35 plans, are typically spread over many regions and companies.) Notably, the agreement between General Dynamics, a U.S.-based multinational arms producer, and Saudi Arabia is being underwritten by the feds’ Canadian Commercial Corporation. When Caterpillar shuttered its London, Ontario plant in 2012 in an unsubtle act of union-busting, Harper’s government threw up its hands and did nothing. Same with the more recent case of Heinz closing its plant in Leamington, Ontario. But the Saudi deal confirms that the Conservatives, for all their “free market” ideology, do believe in industrial strategy and government intervention in the economy – at least when military hardware and arms, or bitumen, are involved.

Official Opposition NDP Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar expressed concerns about the Saudi deal, as reported in The Globe and Mail, “Is this just open-for-business for whomever wants to buy arms from us? I am concerned what these arms could be used for.” It’s a very valid concern.

Back in March 2011, Saudi forces including armoured vehicles (LAV-3s) supplied by General Dynamics rolled into the small Gulf state of Bahrain to crush that country’s democracy movement. As the Ottawa Citizen reported in 2012: “Video and photos shot by protesters and media outlets in March 2011 showed Saudi troops using LAV-3s to suppress an uprising inspired by events in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and opposed to Bahrain’s ruling Khalifa family.”

“More than 30 protesters were killed, hundreds wounded and nearly 3,000 arrested in the joint Saudi-Bahraini crackdown, which was largely ignored by Canada and other Western states because of Bahrain’s strategic relationship with the U.S.” The Harper government’s real Global Action Plan, it indeed seems, is to sell pretty much anything to anyone. Compare this posture to the rhetoric of “ethical oil” which the government deployed in tandem with far right-wing boosters of the Alberta tar sands. The claim was that expansion of the tar sands was “ethical” since the alternative was to continue importing oil from places like Saudi Arabia.

There are layers of bad faith and hypocrisy to peel back from this line or argument, but let’s stick to the most obvious: by this Conservative logic it’s unethical to purchase oil from Saudi Arabia because they’re a repressive government, but it’s ethical and praiseworthy to sell Saudi Arabia the very means of repression. The deal with Saudi Arabia comes following a year in which Foreign Minister John Baird frequently met with top officials throughout the Gulf states. Last spring, Baird took a trip that included stops in Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE – where, of course, he held a photo-op at the local Tim Horton’s.

A press statement about the tour blandly and falsely proclaimed, “In visits to Qatar and Bahrain, the link between peace and prosperity will be explored in detail – to the benefit of those in the region and beyond.” It’s not just this massive arms deal which deserves more scrutiny, but the entire Harper government foreign policy stance toward the Saudis and other Gulf petro-dictatorships. While the Harper government’s uniquely over-the-top alliance with the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu has drawn widespread attention, the increasingly close ties with the Gulf dictatorships has gone almost unnoticed. We need to explore in much more detail the links between prosperity for corporations and war and repression in places like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. A good start would be a vigorous debate, both in the media and in Parliament, about the largest export manufacturing deal in Canadian history.

Derrick O’Keefe is a Vancouver-based writer and social justice activist. He is coauthor of Malalai Joya: A Woman Among Warlords and author of Michael Ignatieff: The Lesser Evil?

Saudi arms deal makes mockery of Canadian values

By Peggy Mason

Embassy News, January 21, 2015

The Harper government has made defending Western values a centrepiece of its anti-terror rhetoric. But our actions both at home and abroad tell a different story.

Since the 9/11 attacks, Western democracies, in the name of fighting terrorism, have enacted countless anti-democratic measures to curtail free speech, free assembly, peaceful political dissent and most especially due process and the rule of law. At the same time, we have partnered with anti-democratic regimes abroad to counter the illegal use of force by violent extremists with our own military “reign of terror.”

Nothing can illustrate this Orwellian approach more clearly than Canada’s unholy alliance with Saudi Arabia. It is one of three countries, along with United States and Israel, that not only violent jihadists but the vast majority of moderate Islam (with much justification) hold largely responsible for preventing Muslim countries in the Middle East from taking their rightful place in the world community.

Saudi Arabia is a key regional ally in the American-led military coalition, of which Canada is a part, against the Islamic State, the Islamist movement that has taken over significant areas in northern Iraq. Yet, the 83 official beheadings carried out by Saudi Arabia in 2014 surely rival the numbers thus far attributed to either Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. And need we be reminded that almost all of the 9/11 airplane hijackers were of Saudi origin, including the mastermind, Osama bin Laden.

The sentencing of Raif Badawi, a young Saudi blogger with family in Sherbrooke, Que., has finally brought some long-overdue Canadian media attention to Saudi Arabia’s appalling human rights record. Mr. Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in prison and a public flogging of 1,000 lashes–50 per week over 20 weeks–for the crimes of insulting Islam and creating the “Saudi Arabian Liberals” website for social and political debate.

Every year thousands of people in that country are subjected to arbitrary arrest and torture, ill treatment in detention and unfair trials. Saudi judges routinely sentence defendants to thousands of lashes. The government does not tolerate public worship by adherents of religions other than Islam, a situation about which Canada’s Office of Religious Freedom has been as shockingly silent as the Harper government in general has been over the manifold Saudi.

Like other Gulf State allies in the fight against the Islamic State, such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (with whom Canada has signed a nuclear co-operation agreement), Saudi Arabia has defined terrorism to encompass nearly every form of peaceful political and intellectual activism, including criminalizing the Gulf branches of the opposition political movement the Muslim Brotherhood.

Last July the United Kingdom completed a Foreign Office review of Brotherhood activities that apparently concluded the group was not a terrorist organization. But the study is mysteriously unpublished, seemingly because it might embarrass Britain’s allies in Egypt and the Gulf. Not to be outdone, Foreign Minister John Baird said in April that he was “tremendously concerned” about the group, but he has now has gone silent in the wake of the apparent failure to find “facts and intel” to support a terrorist designation. What message does such blatant hypocrisy send to reformers and peaceful activists in the Middle East?

And of course let us not forget the Saudi role, using Canadian armoured vehicles, in putting down peaceful demonstrations during Bahrain’s short-lived Arab Spring, actions in gross violation of democratic principles. Saudi Arabia’s egregious human rights record ultimately caused Germany in April 2014 to rescind its own huge tank deal with Saudi Arabia.

Not so for Canada.

A few facts about the Canadian deal: supported by heavy government promotion and a parallel decline in Canada’s export control standards, multi-year contracts for armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia were announced by General Dynamic Land Systems Canada in February, totalling almost $15 billion.

Variants include armoured troop carriers and tanks with large cannons, operable in both urban and rural environments. In short, these vehicles are particularly suited for the type of repression of peaceful dissent we saw in Bahrain. As Canadian expert Ken Epps has pointed out in recent commentaries, it is possible that, “in the near term at least, Saudi Arabia will rival or even replace the US as Canada’s largest arms customer and the Middle East–the world’s most heavily-armed and arguably most unstable region–will become the most economically important to the Canadian arms industry.” This will give Canada a direct financial stake in Middle East conflict rather than in its resolution.

Violent extremists like Islamic State members are able to make headway in Iraq and elsewhere because they exploit genuine local political, social and economic grievances to win local support. This is the story of the Sunni tribes in northern Iraq who, having suffered vicious sectarian repression under the Western-blessed Shia-dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki, decided they had a better chance throwing in their lot with the Islamic State than their own national government.

Do we really think that we can counter violent extremism by partnering with repressive Middle Eastern governments who make a mockery of Western democratic values? By outlawing peaceful political opposition parties while doing nothing to address marginalized, impoverished minorities, these governments are fuelling that very terrorism we say we are fighting.

The Canadian arms deal to Saudi Arabia is a national disgrace. Our export control laws, going back over 30 years, have a human rights test that potential recipients are required to pass. If Saudi Arabia can meet that test, then any country can. If the Canadian government is actually serious about fighting terrorism, the very first thing it must do is to follow Germany’s principled lead and cancel this arms.

Peggy Mason, a former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament to the UN, is the President of the Rideau Institute on International Affairs.

– See more at: http://www.ceasefire.ca/?p=20349#sthash.9lkEJehh.dpuf