Thank you very much.
It is my pleasure to speak with you this evening. I hope you're all well.
I am Maya Wang. I'm the acting China director at Human Rights Watch. I have worked for 17 years in tracking human rights abuses in China, Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong.
First of all, I would like to agree with Mr. Mehdi. In the efforts to address China, I think it's very important to not lose sight of the growing abuses in places like India, which Human Rights Watch also documents.
Going back to China, more than a decade into President Xi Jinping's rule, the Chinese government has very significantly deepened repression across the country.
In Xinjiang, the authorities have committed, as you know, crimes against humanity, which include mass detention, forced labour, cultural persecution and widespread surveillance throughout the region.
Hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims remain arbitrarily imprisoned as a result of the Strike Hard campaign, many of them imprisoned for everyday lawful behaviour. They're imprisoned for things like engaging in basic religious activities, such as praying or having recitations of the Quran on their cellphones. The average sentence for these kinds of behaviours is 12 and a half years.
As to the situation in Tibet, I'll leave it to my co-speaker, my colleague after me, Lhadon, who will elaborate.
In Hong Kong, the authorities have erased long-protected basic civil and political rights after Beijing imposed a draconian national security law on the city in 2020. The government has also taken rapid-fire steps since then to eliminate the pro-democracy movement and the free press, arresting over 10,000 people for their involvement in the 2019 protest, and has just imposed a second security law on the city, known as “article 23”, in March this year.
Throughout China, the Chinese government has tightened its already vise-like grip on society. I don't think I need to explain in just how many different ways the Chinese government is using the law and using security forces to keep control over society, but for just a simple example, expressing pessimism about the state of the economy right now can be punishable as an act endangering state security.
Given this worsening environment for the human rights situation in China, here is what we think the Canadian government should do.
First of all, words do matter, and we shouldn't be affected by the fact that the Chinese government is deeply abusive. We should take words very seriously. We urge the Canadian government to publicly express concerns about the Chinese government's human rights violations at the highest level. It should urge the Chinese government to end crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. Let's not forget that.
Words alone are not enough. They should be backed by concrete actions. Otherwise, we all know that the Chinese government would consider words just a paper tiger. In Hong Kong, for example, the Canadian government should impose targeted sanctions on rights-abusing Chinese and Hong Kong officials after article 23 was just enacted.
While we appreciate the Canadian Parliament's decision to resettle 10,000 at-risk Uyghurs and we also appreciate Canada's ban on forced labour, we fear that the current ban and these actions are not enough. We recommend that you adopt laws, such as a prohibition against imports from Xinjiang, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the United States, to address Chinese government-sponsored forced labour throughout the region. We also recommend that you pass a due diligence law requiring companies to address human rights abuses in their supply chains in Xinjiang and elsewhere.
Finally, Canada should also act to address transnational repression by the Chinese government in Canada. We recommend that the Canadian government encourage universities to track instances of direct or indirect Chinese government harassment, surveillance or threats on campuses. It should assist universities to report annually the number and nature of these kinds of incidents and take other measures that can protect academic freedom on campus.
We also recommend that the Canadian government conduct a review regarding the government agencies' monitoring of, and response to, Chinese government-backed harassment and intimidation in Canada, meet regularly with communities and individuals affected and hold accountable people who harass and intimidate others in Canada for views critical of the Chinese government.
Thank you. I very much look forward to your questions and the discussion tonight.