On November 21, Mark Carney landed in Abu Dhabi, becoming the first Canadian leader in more than 40 years to visit the capital of the United Arab Emirates. Ottawa portrayed the trip as a move toward trade diversification—a strategy cast as urgent after Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats against Canadian sovereignty—but the visit also brought Canada into direct contact with a Gulf power implicated in some of the world’s deadliest conflicts.
Not only did the official talks in Abu Dhabi deliberately bypass any mention of the UAE’s funding of war crimes and possibly genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region, but the subsequent media coverage in Canada also conspicuously failed to address the Canadian government’s own entanglement and complicity in these atrocities.
It’s a genocide: https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Final-IAGS-resolution-Uyghurs.pdf
But let’s not dilute the point about the UAE. Their involvement in Xinjiang is much more indirect than in Sudan, where they are actively arming and funding the perpetrators of genocide.
And Canada likely has more leverage on the UAE than on China.
This is not about ‘leverage’ but a stance on human rights. But, more importantly, it’s a reason why China is not a reliable partner for Canada.
Of course it’s about leverage otherwise it wouldn’t sound silly to talk about Canada cutting off relations with the US over its arming of Israeli genocide the way we have for a Russia’s genocidal actions in Ukraine. Canada just doesn’t have the political weight to cut off relations with 2/3rds of the permanent members of the UN Security Council.
That said, I’m sorry but are you lost or do you have some kind of agenda? This is the thread under an article about the Canadian-UAE relations. If you want to start a conversation on Canadian-Chinese relations you’re free to submit a relevant article at [email protected]