Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2018

[The Chair, Ms. Anita Vandenbeld (Ottawa West—Nepean, Lib.)]

I'd like to call this meeting to order.

Before I begin, I would just like to remind everyone that during the course of this meeting we do not allow videorecording or photographs to be taken. I'd ask that everybody please be conscious of that.

Welcome, everyone.

Please have a seat, colleagues.

On today's agenda is a briefing on the human rights situation involving the Uyghurs.

We have as a witness Mehmet Tohti, who is a representative of the Uyghur Canadian Society.

Mehmet Tohti was born in Xinjiang province in China and now lives in Toronto. He is the founder of the Uyghur Canadian Society and was vice-president of the World Uyghur Congress. Mr. Tohti also appeared before our subcommittee in March 2014.

I welcome you back to the committee, Mr. Tohti. I know that you've testified here once before.

The structure of the meeting today will be a 10-minute opening statement, and I would ask that you keep to that time frame. That will be followed by rounds of questions from the members of Parliament present.

With that, Mr. Tohti, I would invite you to begin your opening statement.

[Mehmet Tohti, Representative, Uyghur Canadian Society]

Thank you so much.

This is my third testimony in the House, especially in this committee. In 2006 and 2014, I came to the House with our leader.

First of all, on behalf of the Uighur Canadian community from coast to coast, I would like to thank each member for giving us this opportunity to shed light on the dire situation of Uighurs that continues with the intensification by the Chinese government.

Uighurs are Turkic-speaking people living in their ancestral homeland in East Turkestan, which was changed to the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in October 1955, right after the annexation in 1949 with Tibet and Mongolia.

The human rights emergency of the Uighurs requires an urgent and resolute response from Canada and other western democracies because of the atrocities and the millions of Uighurs and other native ethnic groups who are affected. As we speak, according to some independent research organizations, such as the Chinese Human Rights Defenders, and other media reports, millions of Uighurs are being held in concentration camps extrajudicially by the Chinese government. Uighurs are approximately 1.5% of the total population in China, yet 25% of all prisoners in China are Uighurs. This number excludes those millions held in concentration camps.

The Uighur identity, including language, culture, history, unique architecture and religious beliefs, including Islamic dietary practices, praying and keeping religious books at home, as well as religious sanctuaries like mosques, churches and other elements, are being criminalized harshly by the Chinese government and punished indiscriminately.

Since the arrival of Chen Quanguo in late 2016, the textbook example of ethnic cleansing, collective punishment and the dehumanization of the Uighur people became routine and raised fear and alarm about what was going to be next. China's extended hand in the Rohingya genocide is well known. Now Uighurs as a nation are paying an extremely high price for a Chinese ambitious plan that was spearheaded by President Xi Jinping. China's belt and road initiative was presented as a 21st -century Marshall Plan. It was intended to colonize weaker and poorer nations by debt traps and eventually replace China as a global boss. East Turkistan is where four land corridors for belt and road initiative projects branch out to central Asia, part of Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

China is now sealing off the entire region, cutting off communication in and out, and building hundreds of concentration camps that hold millions of Uighurs without any charges or any terms of release. Continuous expansion of concentration camps in an open bid and the building of crematoria in every county in the region remind us of the past sad history of the 1940s. If anyone doubts that this is a kind of exaggeration, I recommend that they flip through the history books that recorded more than 80 million civilian deaths in the 1950s by the Communist Party. Especially, as reported by the Associated Press, the Chinese government is now separating Uighur children from their legal parents and locking them up in children's camps with barbed wire and heavy security under the name of kindergartens. Recent reports confirmed that a large number of Uighur inmates are being transferred to mainland China by stopping regular railroad service for civilians. That was reported by Radio Free Asia's Mandarin service yesterday.

Canadian citizens of Uighur origin have been victimized through harassment, threats and intimidation by the Chinese government and through hostage taking of their family members for a long time. A Canadian citizen of Uighur origin, Mr. Huseyin Jelil, has been serving a life sentence in China since 2006. Despite numerous updates, briefings to our government officials and high-level public statements by the U.S. government, including by Vice-President Pence, Secretary of State Pompeo, the U.S. Senate and Congress, and despite a number of urgent calls by the United Nations and the European Union member states to China to close the camps and release the Uighur victims, Canada has yet to issue a public statement to acknowledge the crisis and condemn the 21st-century concentration camps that are holding millions of Uighurs.

This double standard that Canada is uniquely holding compared to other western democracies not only undermines our credibility as a champion of promoting human rights globally, but it has already given the impression that we issue statements on the basis of country select. This double standard approach will keep our head down when history records the cries of Uighurs in the future.

Following are my recommendations to the attention of this committee.

I ask the Canadian Parliament to adapt a binding resolution for urging the Canadian government to follow the United Nations, European Union member states and U.S. response to the Uighur crises and to issue a strong public statement as soon as possible.

I urge the subcommittee to hold a second urgent hearing, or more, in the shortest possible time and listen to more first-hand witnesses to understand what is really going on in those concentration camps. I will assist in all my capacities to make such organization possible.

I urge the Canadian government to send a parliamentary fact-finding mission to East Turkestan to observe the 21st-century Orwellian state, and if possible talk with the Uighur victims.

I urge the Canadian government to follow in the footsteps of Germany and Sweden and issue a moratorium to immediately halt the deportation of Uighur refugees back to China. There is an 18-year-old Uighur girl who's already received a deportation order even though she doesn't have family back in China.

I urge the Canadian government to accept 3,000 to 4,000 Uighur refugees who are currently trapped in Turkey in fear of deportation back to China at any time. They are living without any access to humanitarian relief. UNHCR processes take more than four years.

Uighur families with newborn children abroad especially are experiencing hardship as they cannot get any citizenship for their kids from the Chinese mission. China is pushing them to go back to China by refusing to issue ID documents. Newborn Uighur kids are therefore stateless in many countries. Their birthright citizenship is not granted.

I urge Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to review its policy for Uighur refugees and to speed up processing their refugee claims.

Finally, I ask the Government of Canada to use the Canadian Magnitsky act to punish those Chinese officials who are responsible for this crime against humanity occurring to Uighurs right now.

I thank you for your attention and I look forward to answering your questions.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much for those remarks.

We'll open the questioning, for seven minutes, with Mr. Anderson.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome to the committee. It's good to have you here.

I don't have a lot of time here today, unfortunately. Hopefully we'll have a couple more hearings on this. I'd like you to talk a little bit about the security apparatus that's in place in this area. I know the camps exist. There are also massive checkpoints. I know there's DNA sampling.

Can you just talk a little bit about the security situation that these people are forced to live under presently?

[Mehmet Tohti]

As the United Nations concluded, the homeland of the Uighurs became a no-rights zone for Uighurs. Every 50 metres there are checkpoints—at the entrance to every mall, every bus stop. To get to the bus stop you have to go through an X-ray.

Even within your home, inside or outside, you have to accept installation of security cameras or some kind of recording devices.

For the past two years, the Chinese government has forcefully taken blood samples of Uighurs for DNA sequencing, iris scanning, blood samples, fingerprints, voice recognition and voice data collection.

All Uighurs are basically criminalized. There is no movement from one neighbourhood to another. Currently in some areas in the southern part of East Turkestan, where the majority of Uighurs live, like Kashgar, which is my hometown, and Khotan, the area is completely sealed and, according to Radio Free Asia, 40% to 80% of Uighurs are already held in concentration camps.

I also have to mention that, according to Adrian Zenz, a German scholar, security spending by China for the Uighur region exceeds overall spending for security in China, just for the Uighur area alone. You can see the security control, motion control and movement control of Uighurs from A to Z by using modern technology.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

What people believe is important to them and they want to be able to live our their beliefs. I want you to tell us a little bit about Ramadan and the Chinese government's approach to it this year in terms of their invasion of the privacy of people who just wanted to celebrate their religious events and holidays.

[Mehmet Tohti]

Religious persecution has been going on for a long time. When I was a teacher at Kashgar University in the 1980s, we were not allowed to fast. That was the common practice by the Chinese government. If you work for the government, or a government institute or public sector, you are not allowed to fast; you are not allowed to pray. That has been a common policy for a long time, because the Chinese Communist Party is atheist. They identify themselves as the atheist party.

The most important people are the ordinary students. Before, there were restrictions for the people under the age of 18, and the government officials and the retired government officials, but now an entire religion is criminalized.

Yesterday I heard Radio Free Asia interviewing the local people. Basically, now the government has distributed one simple page of questions: Do you separate halal food from haram food? If the answer is yes, that is a 15-year sentence.

I guess foreign affairs has identified 48 elements that directly send you to a concentration camp. Among those 48 elements are that if you have a beard, if you have a praying mat at home, if you keep Quran, or if you have anything on your cellphone, just God bless. You end up in a concentration camp.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

This sounds like they've learned something from the North Koreans in terms of imprisoning their own citizens.

I want to ask you a little about the citizenship issues.

When we've studied issues here before, a kind of favourite way of a government to punish its own citizens is to restrict their movement and those kinds of things. We've seen this often with the Rohingya, with Ahmadiyya in various areas.

Tell us a bit more about the restriction on citizenship, the taking away of those rights, so that then you can't move, you can't immigrate. Could you talk a little about that?

[Mehmet Tohti]

With regard to citizenship, China has never regarded Uighurs and Tibetans as its citizens. For that reason, all the time they have a different treatment for those ethnic groups, even though they are recognized as people with a distinct culture and they own their own territory. Therefore, the Chinese constitution granted a national territorial autonomous region: one is for Tibet, one is for Inner Mongolia, and one is for Uighurs and others.

When it comes to citizenship or applying the Chinese criminal code, it is applied differently for Uighurs and Tibetans, and especially for Uighurs, because the Uighur Autonomous Region is directly bordered by eight countries, where the Chinese eye to expand. For that reason, the Chinese government puts on restrictions to strip us of identity: one is a national identity, like characters, language and history, and another is religious identity.

When your two main pillars are restricted, you are criminalized. When you are criminalized, you don't get any benefits from citizenship. For example, for Canadian Uighurs, if you apply at the Chinese embassy right now for a Chinese visa, you have a different set of rules. If you are of Uighur origin and holding a Canadian passport, to go to the Chinese embassy for the same visa, you have a totally different set of rules.

Let us look at Uighurs, for example. If your passport has expired and you live abroad, if you go to the Chinese embassy, they extend your passport. Instead, they cut your passport on one corner and send you to China directly with a one-way travel document.

If your child is born outside, as I mentioned in my brief statement, you will not get any ID documents. The children born outside of China by Uighur parents now become stateless.

It is a very tragic situation.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I think I have run out of time.

I want you to know that Mr. Celil has not been forgotten by those of us who have been here for a while. We remember him and the situation he finds himself in.

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Thank you.

For seven minutes, we have Ms. Khalid.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the Uighur community for coming out. I saw you on Parliament Hill yesterday having a demonstration. It takes a lot of courage to raise your voice.

Mr. Tohti, we met in my constituency, and I know that you've met with a lot of members individually. I thank you for raising your voice and your concerns.

I have a question for you to begin.

How many Uighur Canadians are there in Canada?

[Mehmet Tohti]

In the GTA, the greater Toronto area, I can assume approximately 1,500, including kids. In British Columbia, there are approximately a couple of hundred, and in Montreal, 50. All together, the entire Uighur ethnic group in Canada is approximately 2,000.

Because the Chinese government has highly restricted passports, and now all passports are confiscated, the Uighurs do not have freedom to travel. I've been here in Canada for 20 years. Our population growth is almost zero. There are no more Uighurs coming, because they don't have passports.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

My understanding is that Uighurs outside of China are being forcibly deported, returned into China. What happens to them once they return or are forced to return to China?

[Mehmet Tohti]

In April, Germany mistakenly deported one Uighur man. He has disappeared. United Arab Emirates deported some Uighurs who had already received UN-mandated refugee status. They disappeared. Egypt, just because of promised Chinese investment, deported 209 Uighurs last year in July. All of them disappeared. There are some scholars from Malaysia. Some Uighurs hijacked by the Chinese government, because their family members were taken hostage, returned just to save their family members. All of them disappeared.

At this time, returning Uighurs is not only dangerous; it is kind of a partnership in crime with the Chinese to make them disappear. In Malaysia, 15 Uighurs who escaped from a Thai jail are being held in Malaysia because Malaysia recognizes the situation in China for Uighurs.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

What happens to those who are placed in concentration camps? Can you describe for us the life situation and what the Uighur community faces when they are in concentration camps?

[Mehmet Tohti]

Let me speak from the situation I know in Canada. Among our community members, there is no single member whose parents or relatives are not in a concentration camp.

One gentleman in Montreal whose name is Erkin Haji Kuerban has 75 family members or extended family members in concentration camps right now.

In my case, I have 37 family members or extended family members in concentration camps. I haven't spoken with my mother for two years. No one has been able to communicate with their parents or loved ones for two years. It is not only Canadian Uighurs but all Uighurs around the world. China's government just turned the area into a no-communications zone, a no-rights zone. I cannot call them. They cannot call me. That is the situation. It is impossible to communicate even by text messaging or online chatting. The Chinese government basically controls the Uighurs abroad by taking their family members hostage and at the same time applying pressure to control them to serve or work for the Chinese government. So at this time, being an Uighur is a very brave thing to be.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

So we don't really now what's happing in these concentration camps, because we have no communication with the people who are inside the camps. Are there any NGOs and organizations that are keeping close watch or recording first-hand testimony of the situation on the ground?

[Mehmet Tohti]

We know a number of those in the concentration camps from the first-hand witnesses who escaped from neighbouring Kazakhstan as a Kazakh national. One is Omurbek Eli. He described the situation more thoroughly. Because of the time limit, I did not get into that. Basically it is more than jail. It is not, as China claimed, vocational training. It is barbed wire. The scholar, Adrian Zenz from Germany identified more than 150 concentration camps. Each camp is holding approximately 8,000 to 20,000 inmates. One Chinese student in British Columbia, Shawn Zhang, used Google images to identify more than 50 concentration camps through Google imagery. Now we can assume, because the Chinese government transferred hundred of thousands of Uighurs to mainland China, there are not enough facilities.

I know from the description that they are served twice a day a meal, just cabbage soup with a little bun. That's it. Basically, 80 people are living in a 25- or 30-square-metre area. One gentlemen from Kazakhstan described, and it was also reported in Canadian media, that basically people shift to lie down face to face because they don't have enough space. Everything in that room is just locked up. Twice a day they put the food inside. That's it. There are no sanitation facilities or anything. Basically many people are coming out dead. Because there are so many dead bodies, the Chinese government is basically building crematoriums near the concentration camp.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thanks very much.

[The Chair]

You have seven minutes, Ms. Hardcastle.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Tohti, for your bravery in sharing this information with us. We understand that sharing these details we need to hear makes you vulnerable and that there are risks involved.

I want to ask you, where do you think the potential is for the Canadian government to work with influential organizations? Or maybe I should be asking you if there is an influential group, a population, a segment of society, an organization or a country that China does listen to and that we should be working with on these relationships.

[Mehmet Tohti]

There are other countries that are speaking up loudly. For example, the United States already has pressured to apply the Magnitsky Act, and high-level U.S. officials are already talking about the Magnitsky Act.

Not only that, but on September 13 I had a meeting in Ottawa with some government officials. It was a closed-door meeting. Basically, when I asked questions about Canada's stand on the Chinese belt and road initiative, Canada did not have any idea. This is the huge plan that the Chinese President presented as a 21st-century Marshall Plan. If it is a Marshall Plan for China, it should be of global significance, as it should be relative to Canada.

The one thing is that when the western countries are united and show a strong response, China will back down, because western democracies are still a huge market for China. China's trillion dollars did not come from Mars. It came from our streets and our malls, and it came from western markets. The Chinese share in the western market is huge—more than 60% or 70%. China's trillion dollars are coming from Canada, the U.S. and Europe, so we have more leverage to put pressure on China.

Secondly, it is important for us to stand up, because as you can see on this map today, that map basically is China's stretched arms and limbs to Europe and the Middle East and everywhere. That map is branching out from the Uighurs' homeland. That's the reason. On the south, in red, is Myanmar. That's the reason the Rohingya genocide is taking place: for China's benefit, to access the Indian Ocean by passing through the Malacca strait.

If this is the grand strategy or a Marshall Plan of China, we should have something to say on on the Chinese Marshall Plan. The United States, the United Kingdom and Germany openly oppose the plan. The United States even put some money on the table to work with countries in order to divert those participating countries from the belt and road initiative.

In Canada, we have a huge leverage around the world, if not on China, and we have to build alliances with the other global powers and work together at the UN and in other international forums.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Tell me more about your understanding of or your perspective on China's role in Myanmar with the Rohingya.

[Mehmet Tohti]

Now it is a common conclusion that China is behind the Rohingya genocide; our House of Commons unanimously accepts that it's genocide. As we know, there is huge tension in the South China Sea. The Chinese government has already built some artificial islands to expand its territorial reach. Most importantly, 70% to 80% of Chinese imports and exports are going through the Malacca strait. Because of the tensions in the South China Sea, the Chinese government wants to have an alternative route to bypass the Malacca strait to have access to the Middle East or the Indian Ocean. For that reason, the Chinese government arranged that genocide in Myanmar, working with Aung San Suu Kyi.

Secondly, the Chinese government has put nearly $62 billion into the Pakistani port of Gwadar. This fishery port was abandoned. No one used it. China put in $62 billion to have access to the Indian Ocean. That Gwadar port cannot be completed without East Turkestan. The land corridor stretching from the Chinese east coast to Gwadar port has to go through East Turkestan. We have a border with Pakistan and India. China doesn't have a border.

Because this is the Marshall Plan for China, what the Chinese government is doing is basically eliminating these people, because otherwise they are going to claim their ancestral homelands one day or another. They are locking them up by the millions and forcing them to starvation in order to achieve what is called the 21st-century Marshall Plan. Because it is a Marshall Plan, the Chinese government did not hesitate to kill Rohingyas or Uighurs.