I'm not certain we have any that are specific to Canada, but we certainly have some that are specific to human rights generally.
By the way, we did have a piece by the Asia director of Human Rights Watch that was on The Globe and Mail website during the brouhaha with Hu Jintao in China, when it wasn't sure whether the meeting was off, whether the meeting was on, what kind of a meeting it was going to be. Obviously, we insisted in that piece--and there are copies of it around, or they're on the website--that it was right for Canada not to sell out human rights in order to promote trade and investment with China. We certainly don't think that's necessary.
Last week, when you had other members of the Canadian coalition speak about this, it was mentioned that China has often threatened retaliation and has rarely followed through in terms of that retaliation. The particular incident that was mentioned goes back several years, and that was when Denmark was threatened with all kinds of egregious affairs--no trade, no diplomatic relations, etc. Nothing ever came of it.
We were also convinced that if, in this case, Prime Minister Harper hadn't spoken out and said, “This is the stand I'm taking and these are the terms on which I want to meet you”, he would have got.... Nothing happened. Maybe the meeting was downgraded a bit, but he still managed to meet, he still managed to get his message across, and he probably managed to get the message across with a lot more vigour because of the extended publicity around it.
Obviously, we think trade and investment are important for every country. That's a given. They stand in juxtaposition to each other; they're both important. In that respect I think Canada has to remember that China needs that trade and investment just as much as Canada needs it. This is not a one-way street.
I should have probably said this at the beginning. Human Rights Watch has never been for isolating China--never ever. We have always felt that engagement is absolutely critical. China is a big player in the world; it's going to continue to be a big player in the world. That's a fact. Countries need to engage on it, but they need to engage on it on all issues, and human rights, obviously, is a critical issue in terms of that engagement.
We also believe that this engagement should happen on a variety of levels--publicly, privately, in concert with NGOs, without NGOs, with all of the diplomatic assurances, the diplomatic means that countries have to engage with each other. That would include, obviously, on a ministerial and prime ministerial level. That would certainly include, in Canada's case, oversight by committees such as yours, by your constant pushing them, by your constant challenging of them.
I've been with Human Rights Watch a long time. One of the things we learned early on was that the Chinese government didn't understand at the beginning that if the administration said X, then the congress was going to say X too. They learned, but they have continued to try to play off one against the other. I think that is important here. You as an international relations committee must have inputs into the process, must push the process, must ask for feedback on the process, must be thoroughly engaged in that process from start to finish, so that it isn't totally left, obviously, to the administration. I think that's a very important point.
The other thing that's happening now, of course, is that China is becoming a bigger diplomatic player in many respects in the UN, certainly in the UN Human Rights Council, which Canada is a part of. Human Rights Watch is beginning to look more at those interactions and how they affect human rights. That's something you have to be aware of, with a seat on the Human Rights Council, as part of the UN system.
Generally, I think these are issues you have to pay to attention to: to what's happening in the Sudan; to how in fact China has changed its policy somewhat. The role it played, sometimes in providing cover for other nations, and sometimes simply because of its stated policy of non-interference in the affairs of others, etc., has held back other countries, in a sense, from really dealing forthrightly with what was happening in Darfur. That's an issue.
China and its support for Burma is an extraordinarily urgent issue. They supply Burma with arms, with monetary inputs, etc. These do affect human rights. In other words, they affect what Burma can do to its own populace.
That's the important piece here; please understand that this is what I mean. We have it also in Sudan, Burma, Uzbekistan, and certainly North Korea. These are all urgent issues that need to be looked at in terms of their human rights implications—for instance, for refugees on the border, going back and forth between North Korea and China, etc.
I think I've probably overstayed my time and I'll stop there.