Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on July 20th, 2020

[Rayhan Asat]

No, the translation is not coming through.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

That is unfortunate, because it was an important question for me.

I cannot ask Ms. Asat any questions. Is that correct?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Erica Pereira]

Ms. Asat, it's Erica Pereira again. Do you see the interpretation button on the bottom of your screen, the little globe?

[Rayhan Asat]

Oh, yes.

[The Clerk]

Click on that, and click “English”.

[Rayhan Asat]

Okay, yes. It's all good. Sorry about that.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

No problem.

Can you hear me now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Try again.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Okay.

I will start again, because I want you to know what I said.

I would like to thank the witnesses for their testimony today and for being here.

Ms. Asat, your testimony really touched me. I want you to know that our hearts go out to you, to your brother, and to your people. That is why we are here today.

I understand you mentioned child abductions. Do you have any idea what happens to those children after they are abducted?

[Rayhan Asat]

I think we all know that children's best interests are very much with their parents, but when they are taken away and placed in these state orphanage schools, basically they are in the state's care.

This is not the kind of government that we could trust to raise these kids with the values that their parents wished for them to be raised with. What happens oftentimes is that these kids, from a very young age, are subjected to political indoctrination that forgoes their language and their culture, and they just don't have any connection with who they are as Uighur people.

I think basically they are trying to raise these kids in a completely different setting that is very foreign to their culture. It truly breaks my heart, because I think that's also a very good way of destroying the culture, destroying the population, because these kids would not be growing up as Uighurs. I think in many countries we do have a dark history of this kind of practice, but again in China this is happening as we speak.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Asat, how will the pending U.S. supply chain legislation be structured? Can you explain it to us?

[Rayhan Asat]

Yes. Regardless of the fate of the pending legislation before the U.S. parliament, we do have actual legislation, called the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which criminalizes not just the companies but also senior executives who knowingly completely disregard the use of forced labour in the global supply chain.

I hope this specific legislation that caters to Uighur forced labour does get implemented, but regardless, we do have legislation. That's why the customs and border protection agencies have right now ramped up their pressure, and they are very seriously enforcing strong actions against the use of forced labour.

In fact, one thing I need to point out is that they also recently worked with the Hong Kong organization that has very sophisticated knowledge and data-sharing techniques to tackle and combat the use of forced labour in the global supply chain.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

I have a brief question for Mr. Cotler, whom I very much appreciate and respect a great deal.

Mr. Cotler, if nothing is done, is there not a risk that the situation will worsen and that in a few years, our inaction will have cost the lives of thousands of innocent people? I would like your opinion on that.

[Irwin Cotler]

My point on this is that indifference and inaction on our part will end up with our coming down on the side of the violator, coming down on the side of the victimizer and not on the side of the targeted victims. We have a responsibility to intervene and protect and secure justice for the victims and secure accountability for the violators under Magnitsky sanctions, lest we too, by our indifference and inaction, end up being complicit.

I want to say that since we have imposed Magnitsky sanctions under our Magnitsky legislation on perpetrators from Russia, from Venezuela, from Myanmar, from Saudi Arabia and from South Sudan, I cannot understand how we have yet to impose any Magnitsky sanctions on those officials involved in crimes against humanity and arguably in crimes against humanity that are constitutive of acts of genocide.

This is a responsibility, and we must act. We have the means to do so. We have not undertaken or implemented those means. Using Magnitsky sanctions is but one case study, and others have been mentioned by my two fellow witnesses.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Professor Cotler.

This takes us to our last member for questions to this panel. Ms. McPherson, you have seven minutes.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you so much.

Thank you to all of our panellists. I can hear the emotion and the passion in your voices, and I appreciate that very, very much.

As parliamentarians, one of our key roles is to determine what the government should be doing as follow-up, so I'd like to start by asking Mr. Neve to fill us in on his final two comments on how he could see the Canadian government move forward, please.

[Alex Neve]

Thank you very much for that opportunity, Ms. McPherson.

The final two comments were very much focused on individual places of concern. I think there is obviously a need for strong multilateral action. There is the need to be working at the United Nations. There is the need to be canvassing what kinds of measures need to be brought into place around sanctions and the role of businesses and all of that.

At the same time, as Ms. Asat has powerfully reminded us, at the end of the day, this crisis is about what is happening to individuals and individual families, and we need to keep very much focused on what is possible in that regard as well.

I highlighted two situations with very strong Canadian connections where I hope we could see much more robust Canadian responses. The first was the case of three individuals, Ayub Mohammed, Salahidin Abdulahad and Khalil Mamut, who in the past were detained unlawfully at Guantanamo Bay. They have been released, forced into exile in Albania and Bermuda, and for more than five years now, their applications to be reunited with their wives and children, who are Canadian citizens, have been protracted and delayed, and the anguish and injustice that has befallen those individuals and families is frankly unconscionable. Canada could solve that situation in a few days or weeks, and I would urge that this happen right away.

The other is, of course, the case of Huseyin Celil, who has been, for 14 years now, unjustly imprisoned. This has been 14 years during which his four sons have grown up without him, 14 years of separation from his wife Kamila, and 14 years during which the Chinese government has refused a single consular visit, and now it's been four years with absolutely no news of his fate.

Canada needs to intensify its efforts. Prime Minister Trudeau should become involved in insisting that, at a minimum, a health and welfare visit be allowed without any further delay, and we need to look at some innovative strategies, such as appointing a well-connected special envoy who can begin a full-time effort to bring this 14-year tragedy to an end.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Neve.

I have another question in terms of the efforts the Canadian government has made to date. I know we have taken a bit of a soft approach with expressions of concern. Our interventions at the multilateral and bilateral levels have maybe not been as strong as we would like. We haven't seen that China has been particularly swayed by the soft diplomacy effort.

Mr. Cotler, could you talk a little about what you think would be a more appropriate diplomatic response for the Canadian government to take?

[Irwin Cotler]

I think as the Canadian government has held out as a priority for us the protection of a rules-based democratic international order, then we have a responsibility to hold to account those who are engaged in a massive assault on this rules-based international order.

As mentioned, the recent imposition of draconian national security legislation was, in my view, a watershed event, a crossing of a red line, an open frontal assault on the rule of law in violation of an international treaty that we have a responsibility to uphold. The U.K. signed a treaty that has been clearly violated, not to mention the criminalization of fundamental freedoms and the violation of the Hong Kong Basic Law and the like.

This takes me to the Uighurs. We are witnessing, and have been witnessing for some time in Xi Jinping's China—and I use that to distinguish it from the people of China, who are otherwise the targets of mass oppression—a state-orchestrated culture of criminality and corruption, and no less important, an impunity that will be underpinned and nourished if the community of democracies does not take concerted action.

That's why I'm pleased that we established an Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China to bring together parliamentarians from the community of democracies. A democracy alone, whether it be Australia or Canada or New Zealand or the like, can individually be bullied, but if we stand together as a concerted alliance of parliamentarians, a concerted intergovernmental alliance, what I would call at the very least, a “D10”—the G7 accompanied by Australia, India, South Korea, and I would add others—so that Magnitsky sanctions will be imposed in a concerted way, we can secure justice and accountability with whole-of-international-government democracies acting in concert.

The time has come to put Xi Jinping and the leadership of the Chinese government in the docket of the accused. The time has come for us to leave the targeted docket of Xi Jinping and become plaintiffs, advocates, claimants who protect the rules-based international order, who hold the Chinese leadership to account on behalf of the Chinese people and who take the necessary actions.

Alex has mentioned the particular individuals whom we can help at this point, whether Huseyin Celil or the three Uighurs who have been separated or Ekpar Asat, Rayhan's brother. We need to act as if these individuals are a looking glass into the larger crimes against humanity that continue to be perpetrated. If we don't act, they end up being perpetrated through our silence or indifference.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

That concludes our second panel.

On behalf of the committee members, I want to thank the three witnesses for their tremendous advocacy. I know that the Honourable Irwin Cotler was chair of this committee—

Go ahead, Mr. Sweet.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt. Is that all the time we have for this panel?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

That is all the time we have for this panel.

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

If we have specific questions for some of the panellists, can we put them in writing and propose that they submit their thoughts in writing to us?