A LAWSUIT FILED last week in Canada is seeking to halt a major $15 billion sale of light-armored vehicles to the government of Saudi Arabia, part of a growing international movement to stop arms sales to the Saudi government over its alleged war crimes in Yemen.
The suit, filed by University of Montreal constitutional law professor Daniel Turp, argues the vehicle sales to Saudi Arabia violate a number of Canadian laws, including regulations on the export of military equipment, which prohibit arms sales to countries where human rights are “subject to serious and repeated violations” and there is a reasonable risk exported equipment “will be used against the civilian population.” Saudi Arabia, which has a deplorable human rights record at home, has inflicted considerable civilian casualties in Yemen as part of its yearlong bombing campaign in support of the contested government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
“The suppression of human rights in Saudi Arabia and the Saudi government’s actions during the war in Yemen make the sale of these armored vehicles legally unacceptable,” Turp said.
The lawsuit comes in the wake of growing evidence of war crimes by Saudi-led forces, including the use of cluster munitions in civilian areas and the designation of entire cities as military targets. A particularly gruesome attack earlier this month killed 120 civilians at a market in the town of Mastaba, including at least 20 children. Last week, in response to these atrocities, Human Rights Watch demanded that Western countries impose an arms embargo on the Saudi government over its conduct in the war.
Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest arms purchasers in the world, spending billions of dollars annually in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere to outfit its military. But the spectacle of democratic countries selling deadly military equipment to one of the most oppressive governments in the world has triggered outrage from human rights groups. That outrage is now beginning to coalesce into legal and political action to stop these sales.
In addition to the Canadian lawsuit, this year lawmakers in the Netherlands passed a resolution to ban further arms sales to Saudi Arabia, while Belgian officials stated that they had refused an arms export license to the hereditary dictatorship following a mass execution of dissidents in the country. In late February, the European Union parliament passed a non-binding resolution calling for a halt to arms sales to Saudi Arabia by member states.
But despite growing pressure, major arms-producing countries generally appear unfazed. In the past several months, U.S. weapons manufacturers have inked weapons deals with Saudi Arabia for billions of dollars, ensuring a steady stream of munitions for the war in Yemen. “Saudi Arabia has been engaged in a war inside Yemen for over a year, and we’re selling them weapons with knowledge they will be used in Yemen, where ample evidence has shown they are using them to commit war crimes,” said Raed Jarrar, government relations manager with the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker political advocacy group with a mandate to promote peace.
Jarrar said the U.S. has legal grounds to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia under the Arms Export Control Act, presidential policy directives, and international treaties, all of which circumscribe arms sales based on human rights violations.
“We’re only asking for implementation of existing laws and we’re not picking on Saudi Arabia or anyone else because of a partisan agenda,” he adds, “but the U.S. should stop facilitating death and destruction in the Middle East through arms sales to regimes it knows are committing war crimes.”
Although the United States is Saudi Arabia’s biggest arms supplier, it has competition in that field. Just weeks ago, British Prime Minister David Cameron gushed about the sale of more “brilliant” U.K.-made jet fighters to Saudi, even while reports continue to arrive about likely war crimes in Yemen.
“Over the last year, we have documented dozens of Saudi-led coalition airstrikes that have been indiscriminate or disproportionate that have killed civilians and hit civilian objects in Yemen,” said Belkis Wille, a Yemen and Kuwait researcher at Human Rights Watch. “In this context, no country should be sending weapons to Saudi until we see a fundamental change in its behavior around investigating alleged unlawful strikes and compensating victims and their families.”
For now, Canada offers a hopeful test case for using legal means to stop arms supplies to Saudi Arabia. During recent elections there, the deal to sell light-armored vehicles became a campaign issue. The new government, headed by liberal politician Justin Trudeau, has said it would continue with the weapons deal signed by its predecessor, disingenuously defending the sale by describing the vehicles as merely “jeeps.”
Similar deadly equipment has been sold by Canada to Saudi Arabia in the past. Reports from the war in Yemen have suggested that Canadian-made vehicles are being used by the Saudi army in its operations against Houthi rebels. Canada’s export control laws ban arms sales to countries “whose governments have a persistent record of serious violations of the human rights of their citizens,” and who may use the weapons against civilian populations.
The contract with Saudi Arabia was signed by General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada, the Canadian subsidiary of the global arms manufacturer. If successful, the lawsuit would revoke the export permit facilitating the sale, effectively canceling it.
Lawyers involved in the Canadian case say they hope it will help create an international precedent against the sales of weapons to Saudi Arabia and other rights-abusing states.
“This case is in part about sending a message that Canadian weapons should not be used against civilian populations,” said Anne-Julie Asselin, a lawyer at the Quebec firm litigating the case. “But it’s also about setting a precedent. If Saudi Arabia can’t buy these weapons here, we don’t want them to buy them from another country either.”
Top photo: Saudi security forces take part in a military parade in preparation for the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 17, 2015.
This is the first time I’ve been disappointed by our new government… and it’s heartbreaking; In particular Stephan Dion’s idiotic reasoning that if we don’t sell them weapons someone else will. Meet the new boss…
Not disappointed by the fact that they voted with the conservatives to pass a resolution condemning BDS? The Isralis they then claimed was Canada passing a law making BDS illegal and using that to muscle other countries to pass laws opposing BDS. The Liberal government got clowned by Netanyahu.
DO WE KNOW for REAL where did this Hussain Murtaza get his inside info from?
do we know mr Hussein Mustaza ‘s political sympathy &/or affiliation goes to?
Hi, i am from belgium. Unfortunately, we keep on selling weapons to the saoudis… for hundreds of millions. As a matter of fact, belgian made weapons are used by daesh…
More of Saudi’s antics. Daily Mirror (h/t Joemygod) says the kingdom is contemplating the death penalty for LGBTs who come out in social media online.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/656580/Saudi-Arabia-government-execute-gay-people-show-sexuality-public-online
Rumor has it Saudi Arabia has purchased a few nuclear weapons from Pakistan. It is unknown whether they have taken delivery yet.
So, looks like that ship has sailed.
US & European union should immediately impose arms embargo & impose no fly zone over Yemen to block & cripple Saudi Arabian Govt led 9 Arab coalition armed forces committing war crimes against Yemeni civilians & children <
Yes, I couldn’t agree more… Israel, Russia, Iran, Ukraine, and China could use the business.
Let’s hope that the movement towards an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia succeeds.
Some history :-
The Conservative Government in the UK has licensed £5.6 Bn in sales of arms to Saudi Arabia since David Cameron became Prime Minister. The sales included fighter jets, and other military hardware, and the UK, US , Canada and France continue to put profits above fundamental Human Rights.
Britain was also alleged to have been involved in a secret vote trading deal in 2013 to secure Saudi Arabia a place on the UN Human Rights Council. Diplomatic cables were reported by Wikileaks purporting to show that the UK initiated secret negotiations by asking Saudi Arabia for its support ahead of a ballot. Both Britain and Saudi Arabia were named later among the 47 member states of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
A United Nations investigation into Saudi war crimes in Yemen was later blocked by Saudi Arabia themselves.
Of course the US hegemon will never allow this to happen.
It would be extremely punitive to the US defense industry. (aka hurt profits) and impair the use of the Saudis as a US foreign policy proxy (aka the illegal and immoral war on Yemen).
No doubt it would be a human rights feather in the cap of Canada and the world, for whatever that means in today’s reality.
It would not stop the West from supplying arms to the house of Saud in quantities just enough to suppress their own populace while not enough to be a threat to others in the MENA. That is, unless the US says otherwise.
Setting all that aside, congratulations to Daniel Turp for having the fortitude to bring this to the forefront.
Hillary Clinton’s emails make for interesting reading on Saudi arms deals and links to the Syria conflict, Aug 5 2012:
“Providing anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to the FSA, together with active intelligence and communications assistance to help individual FSA units use those weapons effectively, risks fueling the ongoing conflict and possibly even arming al-Qaeda fighters who are infiltrating into Syria. . .”
“The arms that are flowing, at least from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are going to Islamist members of the opposition, many of whom are strongly opposed to the U.S. and could push a future Syrian government in directions dangerous to the U.S. and to Israel. . .”
“The U.S. is consumed with domestic politics. European leaders are focused on the Olympics, the Euro crisis, and August vacations. But the eventual winners in Syria . . . will remember those who remember them and cared enough to level the playing field to help them win.”
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Professor of Politics and International Affairs
Princeton University
https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/11287
They knew the Saudis were using U.S. arms to support ISIS, they knew the “Free Syrian Army” was hand-in-hand with Al Qaeda, and they still went ahead with their covert regime change program, in coordination with the Saudis and Qataris. What a pack of lunatics.
Let’s hold our breath until the US joins in with the growing international movement seeking to place an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia.
If our state governments are willing to take away our students rights to stand up in legitimate protest against Israel in their own US Universities our federal government must be frantically planning the invasion of Canada and any other nation that would screw with our Saudi petro-dollar arrangement.
good idea. So is BDS. So is Palestine Statehood. The world needs a very serious overhaul but the politicos who oppose Jesus and Muhammed would rather run their lawyerly hairsplitting traps to feed upon the populations by enforcing divisions.
Jesus and Muhammed can fix things.
This is one of those “this is still going on!?” things
Isn’t this ass backwards?How about an embargo on the suppliers?US?Israel?GB?France?
Questions are free,the answers aint.
Well, just because we’re mad about it doesn’t mean reasonable steps shouldn’t be taken. They (Canada) can stop selling arms but forcing someone else to stop non-diplomatically is aggression…not really in the theme of promoting peace
All countries must be made to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia, because they are commiting war crimes in Yemen and breaching humanitarian law, terrorizing and deliberately targeting and killing civilians.. Supplying such a despot regime is every bit as bad and as unacceptable as funding and supporting terrorism.
Capitalism + murder = terrorism
I don’t know if you read my comment…if that’s what you meant to respond to
But, regardless, I believe you mean corporatism (not capitalism) as the thing to be demonized and it’s a rather simplistic equation that equates to diatribe, much less a reasonable statement
This suit won’t go far now that Canada’s PM has denounced the practice of singling out Saudi Arabia in this way is Islamophobia, not concern over human rights. Isn’t Saudi Arabia allowed to defend itself against the terrorists who keep bombing it because they are driven to destroy the only Saudi state in the world? And the deaths and destruction in those cities is caused by the terrorists using the population as human shields, not the second most moral army in the world, which goes to great lengths to avoid killing civilians.
If those lines sound offensive and ridiculous in this context, if you’d never vote for a political leader who took a stance so nonsensical and deluded as the one I attributed to Justin Trudeau, take the moment to wonder why such statements and stances seem so reasonable that politicians see them as vital to their chances of election in the similar context such a short distance away. Hint, a certain infamous person sumamarized it as telling a big enough lie often enough makes the lie true.
It’s not to hard to track the flow of weapons from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia where they’ve been used, not just to kill thousands of civilians in Yemen, but also to arm anti-Assad forces in Syria, including Al Qaeda and ISIS:
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/12/07/why-would-america-sell-saudi-arabia-15699-dangerou.aspx
“. . .you have to wonder if a few (or more than a few) of these missiles might not somehow find their way into the hands of the combatants fighting to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. . . .One thing’s for certain though: If this deal goes through, it will mean well in excess of $1 billion in revenues for the manufacturer of the TOW: Raytheon. That’s more than 4.4% of the company’s annual revenues.”
Along those lines, this is interesting, January 1, 2015 by Brad Hoff :
“ISIS is now deploying US-supplied TOW Anti-tank Missiles in Syria”
“Indeed, it has been documented by an external monitoring group, the UK-based Conflict Armament Research, that the well-known CIA-Saudi program (publicly acknowledged to have begun in 2012) to transfer thousands of tons of weaponry to insurgents in Syria resulted in the arming of ISIS fighters.”
And more fun facts from those UK Conflict Armament Research reports:
“Unidentified parties used oxy-acetylene torches or arc welders to remove the serial numbers of IS [Islamic State – Daesh] weapons captured by the YPG [Kurdish People’s Protection Units] in Syria. The consistent welding methods applied to several weapons suggests that the same party removed the serial numbers – most likely to conceal the point at which parties diverted the weapons from legal (state-owned) to illicit (non-state) custody; and that the weapons were diverted from a common source.”
That’s neoliberal foreign policy for you, covert backdoor regime change games with unintended consequences, as seen in Syria and Libya . Comparable to the neoconservative invade-and-occupy foreign policy, as seen in Iraq, 2003. It’s an open question as to whose behavior is the more idiotic, shortsighted and reckless – about evenly matched, really.
No, we Canadians know that our latest batch of politicians are a bunch of elitist, warmongering shit heads. We’re all just glad we don’t have your politicians except Bernie.
Good for Professor Turp. The utterly hagiographic coverage of the new PM Justin Trudeau as Dudley Do-Right to Stephen Harper’s Snidely Whiplash has been ridiculous. He supported Harper’s authoritarian Bill C-51 as an MP and a candidate and he has refused to oppose this nasty deal now that he’s the PM. He’s the Canadian version of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair: how long is it going to take for Canadians to notice?
Right there with you and totally agree that Canadians need to wake up, the Libs are just happy faced Conservatives. See the editorial opinion in the Globe today, one that I have heard too many times recently; that if we don’t sell them the arms, some one else will. That we have more of a chance for dialogue when we are engaged in commerce with them then if we take a moral stand and pull out of the deal. If we can’t take a moral stand against the Saudi’s illegal activities and war crimes what kind of country are we?
I didn’t see that op-ed, ugh. It’s why we need more proper coverage of what is actually happening in Yemen and who is backing it, so the happy smiley nonsense will stop. I mean, I like feel good news stories as much as anybody, I really do. But not when I know they are fraudulent.
I don’t participate in sanctions, as a matter of principle, because they always affect ordinary people. But if BDS is good for Israel, it should certainly be applicable to countries like Saudi Arabia, until they stop abusing the poorest country in the Middle East.
It’s not sanctions, it’s an arms embargo. Aka we shouldn’t sell them any more weapons because they are blowing innocent Yemeni civilians to smithereens.
I know. I was talking about possible grassroots action beyond that.
You need to rethink your principles. It was sanctions that brought down the apartheid regime in South Africa. Saying they have to be strategic is one thing, but to completely oppose them makes no sense unless you disagree with their purpose.
“…“but the U.S. should stop facilitating death and destruction in the Middle East through arms sales to regimes it knows are committing war crimes.””
The old saw applies: “If we don’t sell these things to whomever, someone else will.”
“Make a law, create a business.” http://www.dunwalke.com/introduction.htm
Case in point: the Saudi soldiers in the photo are sporting AKs, I believe.
That’s nothing but a copout. You lead by example and can change things that way. If enough countries were to stop exporting arms, they could economically isolate the remaining countries that failed to do so. You’ve got to start somewhere, and it should always be at home.
I admire your optimism. But your naivete WRT the arms trade is telling. Either entities get what they want above board, or they go through a black market (however hazy the defining line may be between the two).
It’s a good start by Canada, and by Belgium, a major arms exporter. As for the U.S., the president has sufficient power to curb arm sales if s/he sees fit; United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U.S. 304 (1936) specifically was over whether FDR could cut off arms shipments to the Gran Chaco War. It’s still valid case law as a demonstration of presidential authority in international relations generally, and Mr. Obama probably taught it during his spell as a Constitutional Law lecturer.
It won’t hurt the economy, and frankly if the Belgians can do it, whose arms industry may account for more of their exports per capita than the U.S., then maybe this administration should put a lid on it. They probably won’t, but they could, and that’s one thing the Senate can’t block.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Curtiss-Wright_Export_Corp.
It would be funny to see Israel become the biggest arms manufacturer for Saudi Arabia.
And not at all shocking. Once upon a time, they did the same for South Africa before apartheid was toppled.
Well,since 9-11,the Saudis have been total teflon regarding criticism from the ZioMSM.
Total.
Well, the U.S. client states in the region are Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, three groups of people who hate each other. That kind of stuff doesn’t matter to people in power, they just use it to keep the ignorant masses distracted. If you don’t analyze this stuff geopolitically you won’t understand what’s going on. People in power in those countries don’t look at this as Jews, Arabs, and Turks, they look at it as U.S. & western Europe v. [fill in the blank, it used to be the Soviet Union].