Thank you very much, Mr. Kenney. Good morning, committee members.
I'd like to begin by just reminding us as to what is at stake when we're talking about the human rights situation in China.
Husein Dzhelil is a Canadian citizen, a Uighurs, originally from China's Xinjiang district. He was arrested in Uzbekistan earlier this year while visiting his wife's family and was deported to China four months ago. He has been in incommunicado detention since that time, accused of terrorism, a common charge made against Uighur activists who stand up for the rights and autonomy of the beleaguered Uighur people. The risk that he has been tortured is very high.
On September 30, Kelsang Namtso, a 17-year-old Tibetan nun, was summarily killed by Chinese border control guards who opened fire on her and a group of about seventy other Tibetans, many of whom were young children, who were escaping over an isolated mountain pass from Tibet into Nepal.
Human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng has been arrested on charges of inciting subversion. He has been held at an unknown location for two and a half months and has had no access to his lawyer or family. Gao Zhisheng had been providing legal defence to a number of courageous human rights activists in China. He is most certainly at risk of torture.
On June 19, Bu Dongwei was assigned to two and a half years of re-education through labour in connection with his activities as a member of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. It is not known where he is being held. He is but one of tens upon tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners who have been arbitrarily detained in China over the past seven years. Torture has been extensive. As many as 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners may have died as a result of torture.
Those are just four quick snapshots of the range and serious nature of human rights concerns in China. I've shared those four cases simply because they are all the subject of recent Amnesty International urgent actions.
There are many other issues of grave concern as well: the widespread use of the death penalty, repression of journalists and Internet users, crackdown against HIV/AIDS campaigners, repression of labour and other human rights activists, restrictions on religious freedom, forced evictions in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics, violence against women, and many other concerns.
Clearly, the state of human rights in China should be a matter of significant concern for the international community. Clearly, it should be a matter of significant concern for Canada. Husein Dzhelil, Kelsang Namtso, Gao Zhisheng, Bu Dongwei, and the thousands upon thousands of other women, men, and young people in every corner of China who face arbitrary arrest, unjust imprisonment, harsh torture, and brutal executions because of their beliefs, because of their ethnicity, because of their commitment to justice deserve nothing less. But frankly, particularly in recent years, it has become all too apparent that concern for human rights in China far too frequently takes a back seat to the enthusiasm of governments here in Canada and around the world to boost their levels of trade and investment with China. Insisting strenuously that human rights protection must improve in China is seen as an inconvenience when trade deals and contracts are waiting to be signed.
We are told that boosting China's economy is the best strategy for improving human rights protection, but that will only be so if there is concerted focus on human rights at the same time. Keeping our fingers crossed and assuming that what is good for business is good for human rights is simply not good enough.
I'm very pleased to be here. Amnesty International and other Canadian-based organizations who are concerned about the human rights situation in China have been pressing for a parliamentary review of Canada's China policy for over five years. We very much welcome this session today and hope it will mark the beginning of a thorough review of the Canada-China relationship.
At the end of my remarks, I will have some suggestions as to ongoing attention that we hope this committee will give to this very pressing human rights concern.
Mr. Panossian's organization, Rights and Democracy, and my own, Amnesty International, both take part in an active and concerned coalition of thirteen Canadian organizations concerned about the human rights situation in China. Other organizations who are members of the coalition include ARC International, the Canada Tibet Committee, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, the Canadian Labour Congress, Democracy China-Ottawa, the Falun Dafa Association of Canada, Human Rights Watch Canada, PEN Canada, Students for a Free Tibet, the Toronto Association for Democracy in China, and the Uyghur Canadian Association.
The coalition has been working together to promote human rights protection in China since 1993 and has a long history of engagement, in particular with the Canadian government, advancing a range of recommendations for what we consider to be a sorely needed strengthening of the approach taken to human rights in Canada's relationship with China.
The history of grave, massive human rights violations in China, of course, goes back for many decades, and for many long years human rights organizations pressed the international community to ensure that China's human rights record would be examined by the UN Commission on Human Rights. Year after year after year there was an attempt, therefore, at the commission to pass a resolution dealing with human rights violations in China. It was always defeated.
Canada supported those efforts until 1997, when there was a significant change in policy. No longer would Canada try to have China's human rights shortcomings dealt with at the UN or in any other multilateral setting. Instead, Canada decided to take things quietly behind closed doors and raise concerns privately, one to one, between the two governments.
This marked the beginning of the Canada-China bilateral human rights dialogue, an annual meeting of the two governments at which human rights matters would be discussed. The change in approach was absolute. Since 1997, Canada has never again supported efforts to bring China's human rights record before the Commission on Human Rights.
Amnesty International and other NGOs were not opposed to dialogue, even private dialogue. In fact, dialogue, if it is well structured and well pursued, can play a valuable role in improving human rights. We highlighted, however, that for dialogue to be effective it needed to be accompanied by appropriate public pressure in multilateral settings, such as the UN, and it needed to have clear objectives and a process for evaluating whether the dialogue was in fact making any progress towards meeting those objectives. Otherwise, the dialogue risked being an empty exercise that gave an unwarranted appearance of meaningful attention on the human rights front. In short, without substance, we argued that the dialogue process would be no more than a sham.
We pressed, therefore, repeatedly on many occasions for the dialogue process to be improved and for it to be accompanied by ongoing diplomacy at the UN Commission on Human Rights. That did not happen, not in Canada and not in any number of other nations that had retreated to similar private human rights dialogue processes.
The years since the institution of the bilateral dialogue process have not, sadly, led to things getting better with China's human rights record. In fact, in many respects the situation has deteriorated over those nine years, which have seen the launch of the massive campaign of arrests and torture directed against Falun Gong practitioners, intensified persecution of the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang district, and the crackdown on Internet users, just to name three recent human rights escalations.
Torture has continued to be rampant. Many thousands of people have been executed over that time, usually after grossly unfair trials. Hundreds of thousands of people remain held in re-education through labour facilities throughout the country.
Now, finally, we do have the thorough evaluation of the dialogue process in front of us, in the form of Professor Burton's report. He's already provided an overview. Obviously, in our view, this report demonstrates that the dialogue is not working. It is not even seen as being a serious, genuine exercise by those involved.
Among the numerous failings identified by Professor Burton, he highlights that the topics covered in the dialogue process are viewed as being irrelevant by key Chinese agencies and ministries, that there is a lack of continuity in topics from year to year, that the wrong people are involved, that presentations lack depth and do not reflect an awareness of the Chinese situation, that follow-up is lacking, and that the resources devoted to the process are inadequate.
So where does this leave us? Clearly, the dialogue process should not continue in its current form. It is a waste of resources and a waste of time, and allowing what is essentially nothing more than window dressing to go ahead is truly to do a grave disservice to the cause that is at stake here: improving the protection of fundamental human rights.
Consequently, our coalition of China-concerned Canadian organizations wrote to Prime Minister Harper on October 6--and I believe you have a copy of that letter--urging that the dialogue process be temporarily suspended. At a minimum, we have urged that the dialogue not resume until such time as the serious flaws identified by Professor Burton are remedied.
But truly, it is time for Canada to go further. It is time to put human rights at the very centre of all aspects of Canada's relationship with China. To continue to relegate human rights issues to a dialogue process, even an improved dialogue process, is frankly inadequate and incomplete. Canada's relationship with China is complex and plays out across a range of government departments and issues, including international trade, international development, justice, and immigration. The relationship plays out both bilaterally and in multilateral settings. Human rights should shape Canada's dealings with China in all of those areas.
As such, it is time for a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach to the Canada-China human rights relationship, an approach that does not leave human rights behind and instead takes maximum advantage of all interaction between the two countries and of all potential areas of influence and leverage, to consistently advance an agenda of effective human rights reform in China—and to do so constructively in concert with other nations.
The time is right. Professor Berton's report underscores that change in the dialogue is vital and necessary. The coming two years in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics offer a time during which the Chinese government is likely to be more sensitive and concerned about its international image than it has been in the past.
Increased Chinese interest in Canadian natural resource companies may provide greater Canadian influence than in the past. Changes at the UN, with a new Human Rights Council replacing the UN Commission on Human Rights, will open up new opportunities for multilateral focus on China's human rights problems. And within China, a fledgling human rights community, including lawyers and human rights activists, is struggling to make advances, but is facing a harsh crackdown and very much needs international support.
Your work here offers a tremendous opportunity to launch a process that could lead to the development of a new, comprehensive China policy for Canada, one firmly grounded in human rights principles. It is our hope that you will take up that challenge. We have long looked to Parliament to engage fully and responsibly in helping shape and define Canada's relationship with China.
While we are pleased, of course, that you are hearing from the three of us this morning, we very much urge you to continue and in fact deepen this work. A thoughtful and comprehensive study carried out by this committee could go far in signalling new directions and new approaches, which will necessarily entail hearing from many others from various arms of the Canadian government—from Canadian business active in China, from academics and other experts who study and follow China closely, and of course from the various Canadian ethnocultural organizations representing some of the most persecuted sectors of Chinese society, including Tibetans, Uighurs, and Falun Gong practitioners.
Canadian organizations concerned about the state of human rights in China should provide full support to such a process. It is long overdue and could truly make a difference.
Thank you.