Mr. Chair, it's a pleasure to be here again in front of you, and it's certainly very much an honour to be here with someone who is such a revered and respected defender of human rights as Rebiya Kadeer is.
I'm going to make a few comments, but I really want to make sure you have ample time to hear from her.
On January 25, just about a month ago, Ilham Tohti, a professor of economics at Beijing's Minzu University, was taken into police custody in Beijing. He was then transferred in very short order to the city of Urumqi in western China over 2,000 kilometres away. Urumqi is the capital of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. To the area's Uighur people, it is east Turkestan.
Why arrest a professor of economics? Why move him so far out of Beijing? I can assure you it had nothing to do with his teaching style. It certainly had nothing to do with his view of economics.
Professor Ilham Tohti is Uighur. He is the founder of a website, UighurOnline, which focuses on Uighur issues, and that is what attracted the ire of Chinese authorities. The fact that he provides a platform for information to be shared about the Uighur population in China, be it about culture and language or politics and human rights, is something not to be tolerated.
One month later, he remains in detention incommunicado. He's facing charges of separatism, and Amnesty International considers him to be a prisoner of conscience.
It's one example among so many. Going back many years, decades in fact now, the Chinese government has ruthlessly pursued laws, policies, and actions of ethnic discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression against the Uighur people in Xinjiang and in other parts of the country.
Last week's annual U.S. Department of State report on human rights refers to the severe official repression of the freedoms of speech, religion, association, and assembly—it's pretty complete—of the ethnic Uighurs. It all comes at a very fraught time for Professor Tohti, because of course just earlier this week there was a terrible violent attack in Kunming railway station during which armed assailants with knives went on a rampage and killed at least 29 passengers and wounded over 130 others. That is now widely being reported as an attack having been carried out by proponents of Uighur separatism and independence.
That will not bode well for Uighur activists and leaders such as Professor Tohti. In the aftermath of that horrifying attack, the long-standing tendency of Chinese authorities to characterize any and all advocacy or concern about the Uighur people as being tantamount to terrorism will almost certainly increase now in the coming days and weeks.
It also does not bode well for a Canadian citizen of Uighur origin, Huseyin Celil. Huseyin Celil was arrested and imprisoned in China in June 2006, close to eight years ago now. He too has been through an unfair legal process. He has been sentenced to a life prison term on charges of terrorism and splittism.
The Canadian government has tried valiantly to work for his release. The Chinese government refuses to recognize his Canadian citizenship and will not allow Canadian officials to even have consular access. Certainly I hope one of the things you will take on board today as you hear from Rebiya Kadeer is how important it is to call for and press for renewed Canadian action on behalf of Huseyin Celil.
Last, I suppose the big question in front of you today after hearing from Rebiya Kadeer about the situation of the Uighur people in China will be what Canada can do about that. I would put that into the larger question of what Canada can be doing to help more effectively push and promote human rights reform in China.
It's not an easy challenge. China's obviously a powerful and influential country. Amnesty International and many organizations that make up the Canadian Coalition on Human Rights in China have been urging for quite some time now that Canada really does need to adopt a comprehensive, across government, human rights strategy for the Canada-China relationship. We don't have one.
Right now human rights issues are largely the responsibility of hard-working staff within the China division at the Department of Foreign Affairs. There are so many other opportunities and openings and moments of influence that Canada has in dealings that happen through Industry Canada, through Natural Resources, through university exchanges, and through a whole host of ways in which we have dealings with China.
I close by repeating the recommendation that has been made many times now to the government. There is an urgent need for an across government, all governments, comprehensive human rights strategy for the Canada-China relationship. To put it into the context of today's session, that is something which in our view would help ensure that Canada's voice is as strong as it can be in pressing for the rights of the Uighur people to be protected.
Mr. Chair, I do have a slightly longer statement that I had intended to deliver today, but with the aim of saving some time, I'll simply leave the longer statement with you and leave my remarks at that.
Thank you.