Saudi Arabia has suspended scholarships to Canada and will relocate students already there, state media said Monday, after the Kingdom cut ties with Ottawa.
Riyadh, which suspended diplomatic relations with Canada on Monday, will “stop training, scholarship and fellowship programs” there, state-run Al-Ekhbariya television reported.
Plans to relocate 7,000 students and their families in Canada to other countries, primarily the United States and Britain, were already underway, education ministry official Jassem al-Harbash said.
The kingdom early Monday gave Canada’s envoy Dennis Horak 24 hours to leave the country after Riyadh slammed “interference” in its internal affairs.
More than 7,000 students from Saudi Arabia are enrolled in university programs in Canada, according to Harbash, head of the education ministry’s scholarship program.
These students, 2,000 of whom are enrolled in graduate or medical school, are accompanied by more than 5,000 dependents.
During this year’s Hajj season, the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology (Etidal) and Telegram removed over 2 million pieces of extremist content.
Etidal and Telegram also noted a 12.82% increase in propaganda activity from ISIS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and al-Qaeda in the second quarter of 2024 compared to the previous quarter, a trend that typically spikes during Hajj.
Etidal has been collaborating with Telegram on preventing and countering terrorism and violent extremism by reviewing online content posted in Arabic.
Both organizations have agreed to expand their coordination to detect and remove Arabic material glorifying terrorism.
On June 17, the start of Hajj, extremist propaganda was at its peak. The partnership between Etidal and Telegram led to the removal of more than 18 million pieces of extremist content and the closure of 660 terrorist-linked channels in the second quarter of 2024.
The joint efforts targeted three groups: ISIS, with 14.8 million pieces of content removed and 305 channels shut down; Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), with 3.5 million pieces removed and 281 channels closed; and al-Qaeda, with 231,354 pieces removed and 74 channels shut down.
Among items referred were media files — PDFs, videos, and audio — uploaded by the groups on Telegram and public Telegram channels hosting the material.
The cooperation agreement between Etidal and Telegram aims to protect the platform’s users from extremist content, ideological influences, and attempts to exploit the platform in trading the content.
Since February 2022, the partnership between Etidal and Telegram has removed nearly 94 million pieces of extremist content and closed over 14,000 channels.
Etidal, launched in May 2017 by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and other world leaders in Riyadh, focuses on monitoring and blocking extremist content.
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