I want to join my remarks to those of Rayhan and Alex and commend each of them for their tireless advocacy and commitment.
We meet at an important moment of remembrance and reminder of bearing witness, as this hearing is doing, and of taking action as both Rayhan and Alex have called for.
We meet on the 21st anniversary of the launch of the eradication campaign against the Falun Gong. For 21 years now, the Falun Gong have been subjected to persecution and prosecution, to extrajudicial executions, torture and the like for nothing other than espousing ancient Chinese values of truth, compassion and tolerance.
We also meet in the aftermath of the imposition of draconian national security legislation on the people of Hong Kong, a watershed moment in the assault on global rules based on the international order, and which has implications as well for any international advocacy, either on behalf of the Falun Gong or the Uighurs, which could be criminalized under this legislation even if it is undertaken in Canada.
We meet on the occasion of the brutal mass suppression of the Uighurs, involving as has been said in your hearings today, the mass incarceration of 1.8 million Muslims in detention camps.
Rayhan has compellingly described mass surveillance with respect to slave labour, torture and abuse, the massive population control and suppression techniques involving massive sterilization, forced abortions, coercive injections, the forced separation of over half a million Uighur children from their families and the massive assault on their religion, culture, identity, traditions and their memory. The case of Ekpar Asat, as Rayhan has shown, is a looking glass, a case study of the disappeared and these massive human rights violations.
What can we do?
One, we need not only to unmask and expose these crimes against humanity, but to act upon them, to secure justice for the victims and accountability of the human rights violators.
Two, we need to invoke and implement the responsibility to protect. We are meeting on the 15th anniversary of the unanimous adoption by the UN of this doctrine. Canada is one of the architects. We now have to implement this doctrine with respect to the pain and plight of the Uighurs.
Three, we need to impose Magnitsky sanctions. The evidence here is clear and compelling. Join the U.S. and the U.K., which have already begun on this path and join the call of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China of which I am one of the co-chairs, along with Garnett Genuis from Canada. It now has over 600 parliamentarians calling as well for the invocation of such Magnitsky sanctions.
Four, explore interstate remedies before the International Court of Justice.
Five, Parliament should take the lead in finding that these mass atrocities effectively constitute acts of genocide. We were the first Parliament to define what was happening to the Rohingya as a genocide. We should become the first Parliament to define what is happening to the Uighurs as a genocide.
Six, we need to call out the illegal and forced harvesting and pillaging of organs of the Uighurs along with the Falun Gong, which Chinese Human Rights Defenders recently called out as crimes against humanity, if not acts of genocide. We need to utilize UN special procedures and remedies for purposes of justice and accountability.
Finally, we need to take up the cause of Huseyin Celil and seek his release. As Alex mentioned, he has been languishing for 15 years in a Chinese prison. We need to take up the case of Ekpar Asat, Rayhan's brother who has disappeared, as a looking glass into these mass atrocities. Both serve as a remembrance and a reminder of the call to action that we have to undertake along with the international community.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.