Canada-China Relations Committee on May 31st, 2021

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

We're looking to try to find out what protections there are for people in circumstances like yours, and I wonder out loud about the following. I would have expected that the university itself would take such harassment, one student against another, particularly, as you point out, death threats being made by people who are fellow students at the University of Toronto, as a very serious and significant discipline matter. Was that the case? Were there university authorities involved in any way?

[Chemi Lhamo]

The university authorities were involved from day one because of my prior involvement as vice-president, equity. I had access to these individuals, which is a privilege in itself. However, when I talked to them.... There are two incidents I recall. In response to one, the head of security said, “This is above my pay grade”, when I told him that this is possibly a much bigger issue than they think, than just bullying or cyber-bullying, which I think is already a big issue. Number two, I was given a walkie-talkie, and I was asked to go to campus security to get new batteries for it when it ran out. That was supposed to keep me safe.

I'll leave it at that.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

There was no investigation done by the university. You were talking about campus security, but this seems to me to be something that would very likely be above the pay grade of an individual security officer. The president of the university would probably be very upset if one of his or her students was receiving death threats from another. When I was at university, that would have been a serious matter.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

We're in the second round now and we'll l now go on to Mr. Chiu for five minutes.

[Kenny Chiu, Conservative, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for coming.

My first question is for Ms. Turdush.

How much of what you have experienced is evidently actioned by.... I'm just grouping them into three groups of people. The first one is traditional, ethnic Chinese who have been in Canada for, say, multiple decades. The second group is the brainwashed communist Chinese, as I call them. The third one is the CCP United Front Work Department, or consulate-general. From what you have experienced, what do you think of the first, second and third groups?

[Rukiye Turdush]

That is a very difficult question, because I don't have any contact with the Chinese ethnic community. I receive most of the threats through social media, and when they threaten me through social media, we don't know what kind of person they are, what their ideology is or what they belong to.

I was thinking most of them are pro-CCP and and loyal to the CCP people. Usually, Chinese democrats and the people not loyal to the CCP.... I have some Chinese friends who do support me, but they don't say I am a funded CIA agent—or they're not going to swear by that. They don't do that; they support me. There are people like that, but I don't know exactly which one is which; but like you say, there are people who do not support the CCP, and there are Chinese people who support the CCP. Most Cantonese people support the Uighurs and what's happening in east Turkestan right now, so it is very clear there.

[Kenny Chiu, Conservative, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you.

My second question is for Ms. Lhamo.

With regard to the trolls of the CCP proxies, the 50 Cent Army, that you referenced, do you have any good suggestions? Let's just assume that these are people who live in Canada here. Do you have any good suggestions for government to deal with these people to make them understand the limit of freedom of speech versus criminal actions?

[Chemi Lhamo]

I think it's to lead by example. When the government takes concrete action by implementing legislation to counter covert Chinese government interferences—and there are examples led by other governments like the U.S. or Australia that you folks can take and implement within the Canadian government—that will have a ripple effect within the Canadian constituents. People will understand the seriousness of the issues, the human rights violations that are happening in China, in Tibet, in East Turkestan, in Hong Kong and wherever else this is happening. With that, I believe Canadians will also learn more about what is actually happening and why we're doing what we're doing. When that happens, we can start creating a space of safer spaces and communal healing where people know what the difference is.

[Kenny Chiu, Conservative, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Okay, thank you.

Now my third question—

Go ahead, Ms. Turdush.

[Rukiye Turdush]

I want to quickly add something.

Also, the Canadian government should educate those communities and the people, too, because they cannot differentiate between crime and freedom of speech. They say, “Okay, you're anti-China and anti-Communist Party, but I support them. That's my speech freedom. That's why I'm attacking you.” So many Canadians, not only Chinese people, not only ethnic Chinese—I saw so many Pakistanis, too—are supporting China's Communist Party, distributing fake news and attacking me through social media. These people are YouTubers, influential people. People have to be educated. Education is important, too.

[Kenny Chiu, Conservative, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you.

I was looking at the RCMP's national security awareness page. On there, it lists the 1-800 number for you to call, but it actually prefaces it by saying, “If you suspect you have encountered terrorist planning activities call 1-800-420-5805.”

Let me ask you this: Are you aware of this national security awareness page? If so, have you called that number and under what situation?

Either one of you can answer very quickly for 15 seconds each.

[Rukiye Turdush]

I didn't.

[Chemi Lhamo]

The answer is no. However, I have met with various RCMP investigators and officials who have never given me that number.

[Kenny Chiu, Conservative, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you.

I do have constituents who complain to me that they are being ping-ponged between the RCMP and the CSIS people. One force tells the victims to actually approach the other.

[Chemi Lhamo]

That's exactly my case.

[Kenny Chiu, Conservative, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Rukiye Turdush]

It doesn't work because—

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chiu.

Mr. Lightbound, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Let me first echo what Mr. Genuis said at the beginning of the meeting. I feel it's very important to dispel or at least not foster the confusion we sometimes see arise between the policies and actions of a country that doesn't care about international law, its people, or its nationals, Asians, for example.

We have seen anti-Asian bias rise in this country, and it should not be happening. We need to work hard to suppress this bias that may well apply to the Chinese regime, but it also applies to all countries that commit acts violating international law, which we sometimes have to criticize from a moral standpoint. So I echo his sentiments, as we all should.

I thank the witnesses for their courage and for testifying before the committee tonight.

Ms. Turdush, my first question is for you, and I am sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name. You have already spoken of the difficulty some Uyghur nationals have experienced being harassed by the Chinese state when they contacted Canadian authorities because they feared retaliation against their family members in China.

Do you have any suggestions as to the best way to report violations or harassment to Canadian authorities without the Chinese authorities finding out?

[Rukiye Turdush]

Those people are all afraid and they cannot tell the Canadian government; they don't want to report to the Canadian government. Many of them have even told me secretly, but they have no courage because their parents were kidnapped as hostages by China. As I said in my statement, some kids have even disowned their child-parent relationship. They went to a lawyer in Canada and they got a certified letter and sent it to China, saying “They are not my parents” so that the Chinese government would erase their name from the residential papers and not bother their parents anymore. They were thinking in that way and that's what they did. Many of them were very scared, and as I just said, they could not report to the government.

It is important that parliamentarians and politicians like you introduce a bill for the protection of Uighur human rights, similar to the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act that the U.S. Congress passed last June. It would mobilize action to stop genocide and stop China's taking of hostages and killing Uighur family members back home, and endorse multiple steps to protect the rights of Uighur Canadians, including investigation and accountability for China's officials involved in the harassment of Uighur Canadians.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you very much for the very straight answer.

My next question is for Ms. Lhamo.

Ms. Lhamo, you said in a recent podcast that prevention is better than cure, and in fact, we should strive for prevention. We should also investigate incidents when they occur, but we should prevent them.

Do you have any suggestions as to the best prevention measures?

You were talking about Australia's foreign interference legislation, among other things.

For the benefit of the committee and so we can include it in our report, could you explain how these measures might help us better combat Chinese foreign interference?

[Chemi Lhamo]

Reciprocal access to Tibet is one where we have sanctions that are being placed, expelling diplomats. There are also examples that have been passed in the U.S. administration, the Tibetan Policy and Support Act.

Here, I'm not just speaking on behalf of Tibetan people. There are so many other oppressed people who are being subjected to violence by the Chinese state. We're talking about East Turkestan, the Uighurs, the Hong Kongers, the Taiwanese.

When I think of Hong Kongers, there are 300,000 Hong Konger Canadians who are struggling inside, so we have to think about this on a larger scale.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you.

I have one last question. The last time you appeared before this committee, you said that people from China or Hong Kong were getting arrested for social media posts.

Do you have more to tell us about it? Do you have any more information about the kinds of arrests? We'd like that information to be in the report.

[Chemi Lhamo]

I'm sure you'll get more information in the testimonials following this, by the Hong Kongers, because there have been a lot of arrests of Hong Kongers.

For Tibetans, Tashi Wangchuk is a case that a lot of people have known about. He is a language rights activist. He was actually just a shopkeeper in China, and he was imprisoned for five years simply because he wanted his niece and nephew to learn Tibetan at their school. As I said in my remarks at the beginning, it's all being erased from Tibetans.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you very much.