Canada arms sales to Saudi Arabia outrageous: Activist

Press TV has interviewed Ken Stone, with the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War from Ontario, on Canada’s weapons sales to Saudi Arabia amid mounting global opposition to the abuse of human rights by the kingdom.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: This news all comes as Canada, where you are sitting right now, is set to still give Jeeps and other ammunitions to the Saudis, how do you feel about that?

Stone: We in the peace movement are outraged by the fact that Canada, the new government of Canada, the Trudeau government, is continuing with this enormous 15 billion dollar arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

In view of the fact that the Canadian government’s own studies have shown that Saudi Arabia has a terrible, abysmal human rights record and is likely to use the weapons that are sold from Canada in illegal operations against other countries and against its own civilians.

These weapons are mostly not Jeeps, that’s how the government tried to get a way selling this to the Canadian people before. These are armored carriers. These are heavily armored and mounted with heavy duty weapons, they are not Jeeps.

And these weapons have already been used by Saudi Arabia to put down the uprising in neighboring Bahrain about three years ago or four years ago during the so-called Arab Spring when the people of Bahrain rose up against the monarch who has ruled the country with an iron fist for a long time.

Now, in Canada we in the peace movement wish that Saudi Arabia along with Israel, we called two of the most dangerous aggressors in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia has been supplying and funding the terrorist mercenaries in Syria and Iraq. Saudi Arabia has attacked with ruthlessness civilians in Yemen.

So, this is a country that shows no respect for the national sovereignty of other countries. It shows no respect for international law. And we think that the peace movement needs to say something about it, the peace movement in all the countries of the West.

But to say that in all the countries of the West, the governments are arming Saudi Arabia. There have been huge arms sales recently in the United States, in France and in Britain.

It seems to us in general in our coalition that this attack by Saudi Arabia on Yemen is a NATO operation that behind the Saudis are the Americans and the British. Recent reports have shown that the British are in the war room in Saudi Arabia. The Americans and the Israelis are giving military intelligence and reconnaissance for the Saudis.

So, this is indeed a NATO operation and the countries of the West should seize and desist from helping Saudi Arabia. It’s a function of hypocrisy in the West that Saudi Arabia gets a path for attacking its neighbors and for abusing the rights of its own citizens.

For example, recently Saudi Arabia executed 47 people including Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shia cleric, whose only crime was calling for democratic reforms in a totally despotic monarchy.

Yet Saudi Arabia gets a path in the world media. Saudi Arabia gets a path at the United Nations.

Whereas a country such as Syria which has been struggling for five long years to defend itself against the foreign aggression, the media in the West, the governments in the West despite the fact that there is a United Nations peace talks taking place in Geneva right now; they all have something to say about the Syrian government and how Syria should conduct itself.

Yet, they give a path to the Saudi Arabian government. We find this to be hypocritical.

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