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

[Chris MacLeod, Lawyer, Founding Partner, Cambrige LLP, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I've been acting as legal counsel for Huseyin Celil and his family since his detention in 2006.

First, thank you for covering this important topic. I appreciate time is tight so I will speak quickly to cover as much ground as I can, and then turn it over to Kamila, Huseyin's wife.

Let's begin. I think it's worth giving some background on Huseyin Celil's case. I know that some members were not in the House in 2006. I know that member of Parliament David Sweet was and has been active and engaged in the file.

Huseyin Celil was raised in northwestern China. He's a Muslim Uighur within the Uighur community. He speaks out in China in favour of his ability to practise his language and his faith. For this he faces persecution and detention in China. Ultimately in the late 1990s he leaves and treks across Asia into Turkey. In the city of Istanbul he declares and is given UNHCR refugee status. This time he and his wife Kamila and their three boys ultimately immigrate to Canada as UNHCR refugees in 2001, become permanent residents and ultimately Canadian citizens.

In 2006 Huseyin, Kamila and their three boys decide now that they are Canadian citizens to travel on Canadian passports to Uzbekistan, with temporary travel permits obtained from Uzbekistan, to visit Kamila's family. While there one of their boys falls ill. Huseyin decides, in accordance with proper regulations, to renew that travel visa. When he goes to the appropriate authorities in Uzbekistan to renew that on his Canadian passport he's red-flagged because Uzbekistan and China, unknown to Huseyin at the time, have a treaty. They're part of the Shanghai besh, seven countries that share information on political dissidents.

Huseyin, on March 27, is detained in Uzbekistan. There's a period of about 90 days when he's in Uzbekistan, and people in Canada and on the ground are trying to determine what to do. The Uighur community in Canada is loud and clear, as are we to the Canadian government, that this is the moment to get Huseyin out. It's China that wishes to obtain him. Ultimately, Uzbekistan transfers Huseyin to China in or around July 2006. He faces a trial. He is sentenced to death, and ultimately through the interventions of the minister of foreign affairs at the time, Peter MacKay, that death sentence is commuted to a life sentence.

The Canadian government has never had consular access to Huseyin Celil. Kamila and the family had updates from Huseyin's family in northwestern China up until 2016 when all went dark. We haven't had any word from Huseyin's family there. We've never had direct communication with him. This is really a long-standing Canadian tragedy where we have a Canadian citizen detained in China, who didn't travel to China on a Canadian passport, or at all. He went to neighbouring Uzbekistan as a Canadian citizen to visit his in-laws. There, and this is where we have a case of rendition, Huseyin was ultimately transported by the Uzbeks to China, or the Chinese came into Uzbekistan and picked him up and transported him there.

The trial was had. At the time, then prime minister Harper ordered the embassy staff out of Beijing to go to the courtroom and wait every day to find out when there would be a trial and try to gain access. They ultimately were never allowed in to hear the trial. An appeal was taken.

That's been the long and unnecessary saga of Huseyin's case.

We've always asked, and I'm going to ask again, for two things. One is that the Prime Minister appoint a special envoy specifically tasked with seeking the release and return of Huseyin Celil. We want a special envoy, as opposed to the embassy and the ambassador, because the single task of the envoy will be to seek the release and return of Mr. Celil, figure out what needs to be done to make that happen. It's been 14 long years.

As for Kamila, I'm not sure if we have her in the room at the moment, but we'll now go into additional details about the challenges she's faced with her four young children. The four boys, Hussein's children, Kamila's children, haven't seen their father in 14 years. One, Zubeyir, was actually born after his father's detention. This is a Canadian tragedy. It's been long languishing. When the crackdown on the Uighur community in northwestern China commenced, we already had no consular access. We've now had absolutely zero information since 2016 on his state and his situation.

Number one, a special envoy should be appointed by the Prime Minister seeking Huseyin Celil's release and return. The second would be that we have all-party co-operation in this regard. I recall when the Conservatives were in power, Minister MacKay commuted the sentence from death to a life sentence. Member of Parliament Sweet and member of Parliament Kenney were two active Conservatives at the time. Member of Parliament Gould has also been active, but we haven't had non-partisan action where all members of the House in unanimity are all rowing in the same direction.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. MacLeod.

We want to ensure that Ms. Sauytbay has some understanding of what the other witnesses are bringing forward. I'm going to ask our Kazakh interpreter, Gani, if he would be able to do a one-minute synopsis after each of the witnesses speaks. Would you be able to do that, Gani?

[Gani Stambekov, Interpreter, As an Individual]

Yes, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Gani is going to do one minute on what Mr. MacLeod had to say right now, and then we'll move to the next witness. He'll do this after the next witness as well.

Ms. IIham has six minutes. She is an author and human rights activist.

Ms. IIham.

[Jewher Ilham, Author, Human Rights Activist, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having me today.

My name is Jewher IIham. I come to you today not as a scholar or expert on Chinese politics and policy, but as the daughter of someone who was, and still is, a victim of human rights abuses targeting Uighurs in China.

My father is Ilham Tohti, the 2019 Sakharov Prize laureate. He also has been recognized with numerous other awards. He has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. I haven’t seen him since February 2, 2013, when I left him in a tiny white room at the Beijing airport and boarded a plane to the U.S. We were on our way to Indiana University, where my father had been invited as a visiting scholar. I was 18 years old.

At first I refused to go without him. I did not think leaving my father alone at the airport under those circumstances was a good idea. I didn’t know what was going to happen to him. Would he be interrogated? Would he be tortured? Would I ever see him again? A million questions were running through my mind. He insisted that I get on the plane. Soon I was bound for the U.S. where I knew no one, had nothing and did not even speak the language. I was terrified to go to an unfamiliar place and start a new life from scratch, but today I'm not here to talk about myself; I'm here to talk about my father and the Uighur people.

My father was born in 1969 in Artush, a small town in the Uighur region known for producing some of the area’s top business people. He was a successful businessman who spoke many languages, as well as being a highly regarded economics professor at Minzu University in Beijing. He's well read, a compassionate soul and a good father. My father was, and always will be, a firm believer in equality for all people.

Prior to his arrest in 2014, my father devoted most of his time to promoting dialogue among ethnic minorities and the Han majority in China. He travelled to many countries, discovering that diverse people can live together in harmony. He wanted that for China. My father created the website Uyghurbiz.com as a place for the free exchange of ideas. He hoped it would help Han people understand the many aspects of Uighur life, the rich culture, the beautiful language, as well as the social and economic disparities. He also gave many interviews in China and around the world. He published articles to draw attention to this issue and promote conversation.

This was all in a good faith effort to counter China's state-backed media and school textbooks that portrayed the Uighurs as entertainers, pickpockets, thieves and now violent extremists.

My father was detained for three days after we shared our last goodbye at the Beijing international airport. He spent the next 11 months under house arrest. While I remained in Indiana, we spoke at least three times a day, making sure the other one was safe and adjusting well to our new circumstances. He warned me that he would probably be arrested. A few months later he was taken away, on January 15, 2014.

I was born into my father’s world. I had no choice. While living as a young girl in China, I experienced the intrusions of state security into our home, the constant surveillance, the restrictions on schooling, the detainment in the countryside and the death threats multiple times, all because my father was dedicated to promoting peaceful dialogue between Han Chinese and Uighurs.

In 2013, the choice to leave China was mine. With that choice came the opportunity to keep my father’s work alive. He knew that the Chinese would attempt to silence him by labelling him a separatist and locking him away in solitary confinement. In fact, my father was the first political prisoner since the Cultural Revolution to be given a life sentence in China. I want to emphasize he was trying to bring people together, yet he was charged and convicted as a separatist.

When this all started, I felt I was among the few, but by 2017, I came to understand that I was part of a generation of Uighur children who did not know where their parents were.

Over one million Uighurs are now estimated to be locked up in concentration camps. As you likely know, that has been documented through surveillance satellite photos, leaked videos, leaked party documents and the testimony of survivors.

You already heard from Mr. Adrian Zenz earlier today about using forced sterilization to reduce or even eliminate the Uighur population in western China.

This needs to stop. The systematic targeting of Uighur people is a complete destruction of my culture, my tradition, my language, my religion and my ethnicity. Many people ask whether my father has been transferred to a camp. It is the type of question so many of my fellow Uighurs are being asked these days, and my answer is that I don't know where he is and I don't even know if he is alive. No one has had contact with him for almost three years and I just don't know.

But I do know that my father is a wise man who knew that unity around a common cause is more powerful than isolation. The time has come for all of us to find each other and unite in our demands for freedom. With that, I offer a few calls to action that Canada can take.

First, stop allowing the Chinese government to politicize the situation of thousands, of millions, of Uighurs being held in camps. We all know that this is not an internal affair. This is a global mission, and Global Affairs Canada needs to be raising the issue on a regular basis with its counterparts in Beijing. It must let them know that the Government of Canada will not tolerate these human rights abuses. They need to call on China to close the camps and stop the persecutions, and on a personal note, release my father, Ilham Tohti.

Second, they need to speak up on behalf of the estimated over one million prisoners in the camp. Two years ago this committee urged the Government of Canada to address this escalating crisis and over that time the Chinese government has continued to lock up people like my father and silence others. I urge the Government of Canada to create formal legislation such as the recently passed bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act in the U.S.

Third, encourage Canadian manufacturers to stop all business with suppliers and subcontractors that sell materials produced through forced Uighur labour. I would encourage all Canadian citizens not to buy products from brands that continue to rely on goods made by Uighur prisoners. Those lists are easy to find on the Internet.

As I said in my opening, I come here as a Uighur and as the daughter of Ilham Tohti. I believe it is not just my duty but the duty of all of us to protect the fundamental rights of those who are being persecuted.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to speak to the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Ms. IIham. Thank you for your courage and for sharing your personal story of the persecution of your father, your family and the Uighurs.

Now we'll ask Gani, our Kazakh interpreter, for a one-minute synopsis, which I know is short, of what Ms. IIham had to say.

We will move to Ms. Sauytbay for her statement.

Gani, can you please let her know about the time? If she goes for two minutes at a time, and you take a minute or two to do the consecutive interpretation, then she can probably break her statement into three blocks.

[Sayragul Sauytbay, East Turkistan Minority Activist, Recipient of the 2020 International Women of Courage Award, As an Individual]

[Witness spoke in Kazakh, interpreted as follows:]

Dear guests who are participating at the current conference, ladies and gentlemen, I am very happy to be at this conference with everyone.

My name is Sayragul Sauytbay. I am an ethnic Kazakh. I would like to say thank you so much to the Canadian government which is organizing this conference. I am very grateful to everyone who helped to organize this conference as well.

Again, my name is Sayragul Sauytbay. I am an ethnic Kazakh, and I am a live witness for the 21st century's fascist concentration camp, mainly organized by the Chinese Communist Party.

I was born in the native land of my people, which was originally called East Turkestan. After the Chinese Communist Party's acquisition, they changed the name to so-called Xinjiang. I was working there as a doctor, teacher and director of a school.

After the Chinese Communist Party started destroying our people's daily lives, my family and I decided to move to Kazakhstan. When I tried to move with my family to Kazakhstan, they forcibly took my passport and they didn't let me move to Kazakhstan with my family.

After my family moved to Kazakhstan, I was in contact with my family via WeChat, a social media application, and after that the Chinese Communist Party forcibly stopped me from contacting my family via WeChat.

The fascist Chinese Communist Party started their genocide policy to destroy, to kill all the East Turkestan people at the end of 2016. Officially they started this policy at this time. With a lot of false claims, they arrested innocent people and imprisoned them in concentration camps and prisons.

Even though I was not guilty, just because I'm Kazakh and because my family live in Kazakhstan, I became a victim of the cruel policy, and in January 2017, as I said, because my family was living in Kazakhstan, they came after me every midnight to my home. They took me from my home. They were investigating me, scaring me, beating me and pressuring me.

In November 2017 I was forcibly sent to one of the concentration camps that were organized by the Chinese Communist Party, where Kazakh people and Kurdish people were forced to live in prison, and I was teaching them the Chinese language. Because I was a teacher at the concentration camp, I was also forced to sign a secret contract. According to it, if I leaked any information of what I saw inside the concentration camp, I would be sentenced to death.

In the fascist concentration camp where I was imprisoned, there were about 2,500 people just in one concentration camp, and all of them were innocent people who were sent to the concentration camp with fake claims. The age range of the imprisoned people was between 13 and 80 years old. They cut hair off all of the imprisoned men. The imprisoned people were handcuffed hands and feet, all of them. Every corner of the prison cell had CCTV cameras, and the middle of the prison cell had one CCTV camera. All the corridors had cameras as well, and they controlled our every move 24 hours a day.

The prisoners of the concentration camp were forcibly taught and learned Chinese traditions, Chinese culture and songs. Also they were taught the spirit of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the policies of the Chinese Communist Party, the notions of the Communist Party and prisoners were praising the Chinese Communist Party and Xi Jinping.

These Chinese concentration camps were oppressing people. They were destroying the souls of imprisoned people, and they were torturing all prisoners. Also in these concentration camp prisoners were forcibly sterilized, and they were forcibly given special medication. After that, women lost their ability to menstruate and men lost their ability to have a future family. This kind of torture would unfold. All women, young women as well, were raped daily by the workers in the concentration camp.

Also at that concentration camp they had a special so-called black room or black house where there were no cameras. People who went there were badly tortured and there were different kinds of torture in that black room. When I was teaching, sometimes guardians or security came to my class and started speaking to prisoners and they took them away to that black house, the black room. After that, when I was teaching, we would all hear their screaming, their voices. They were begging and asking for help—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Gani, let Ms. Sauytbay know she has one more minute to conclude her statement, and then she will have an opportunity to share more during questions.

[Sayragul Sauytbay]

[Witness spoke in Kazakh, interpreted as follows:]

Currently what the Chinese Communist Party is doing in East Turkestan in the 21st century is the same kind of genocide the fascist Germans did 70 years ago against the Jewish people. Also, in the 21st century, the main goal of this genocide by the Chinese Communist Party is to destroy ethnics, to destroy people. Now the people of East Turkestan have the same fate as the Jewish people had before.

I am asking the Canadian government to help the people of East Turkestan and to do everything possible to stop this crime.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Gani, I know we've said a lot about technology here today. It is sometimes challenging, but in these extraordinary COVID-19 times, we're blessed to have this technology and to be able to have a Kazakh interpreter in Washington, D.C.—Gani, thank you very much—and to have Ms. Sauytbay able to share her story with us remotely today.

We are going to go to questions now, and we are going to start with the vice-chair and the impetus for our being here today, Mr. Sweet, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair, and thank you again for your kind words. I'll just return to the last witness who just gave her opening remarks.

Ms. Sauytbay, I commend you for fleeing to Kazakhstan and then fleeing to Sweden. You are an extraordinary person, and you deserve the award and recognition that you got for being a courageous person of 2020.

[Sayragul Sauytbay]

[Witness spoke in Kazakh, interpreted as follows:]

Thank you so much.

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

I will pay you the respect that you deserve and call your homeland East Turkestan. You must have witnessed, because of the time and the duration you were there before you fled, this development of what one of our witnesses called a “police state”, where the surveillance continued to ramp up many times over.

Is it a fair statement that it's not only the incarcerations, but it's entirely a police and surveillance state?

[Sayragul Sauytbay]

[Witness spoke in Kazakh, interpreted as follows:]

Yes, I confirm that East Turkestan became one big prison. Everything everywhere that's said or any action 24 hours a day is recorded, and they check everything and everyone in East Turkestan.

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

Ms. Sauytbay, lastly, Adrian Zenz testified today that in his opinion this was the Holocaust 2.0 and that the only difference is that the point was to break and crush the Uighur people rather than have them exterminated. Would you agree with that observation as well?

[Sayragul Sauytbay]

[Witness spoke in Kazakh, interpreted as follows:]

In East Turkestan there are the native people of this land: Uighurs, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tartars, Kyrgyz. All of these people are currently under this Holocaust policy and it's made directly by Beijing to destroy and eradicate all these native people of East Turkestan.

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

I'm going to share the rest of my time with my colleague, Mr. Chair, but I wanted to say just one statement to Mr. MacLeod. The statement is that I thank you very much for all of your advocacy in regard to Huseyin Celil. I regret that years have passed and we're not any further along, but we will continue do the best that we can to seek his ultimate release.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Mr. Genuis, just to let you know, Mr. Sweet has used just about three and a half minutes. We have stopped time when the Kazakh interpreter speaks. You have three and a half minutes left.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll go to Mr. MacLeod.

Please do give our best to the Celil family. I'm sorry, it looks like we may not be able to hear the testimony directly from them.

I want to ask you about your engagement with the Government of Canada right now. We had some frankly very disturbing testimony at the Canada-China committee back in February, where I had asked our ambassador about the Celil case. He initially seemed unaware of it, and then he said:

I'm looking into that case. I call him Huseyin. Basically, because Huseyin is not a Canadian citizenship holder, we aren't able to get access to him on a consular service side. We've tried, because he's someone I would like to see. I know it has been a long-standing file, but—

That's a quote from our current Ambassador Dominic Barton, in Beijing. I replied to correct him to say that Mr. Celil is a Canadian citizen.

It just floored me at the time. In a way it still does, that in testimony specifically where the ambassador spoke regularly about a number of important cases of Canadians detained in China, not only would he not mention the Celil case proactively but that there was that misstatement about Celil's citizenship.

I know it's important for you to work with the government on this, Mr. MacLeod, so I'd like to ask this: Have you been able to have any follow-up engagement with Ambassador Barton? Has he recognized the reality of Mr. Celil's citizenship, and is he taking it up with the same seriousness that he is taking up the cases of other Canadians detained in China?

[Chris MacLeod]

Thanks for the question. It might be an opportunity to have Kamila speak for a couple of minutes.

Following that—which I agree that it was disappointing that the ambassador had not been properly briefed—is that at the early stages in 2007, 2008 and 2009 and onwards, you'll recall that there was very deep engagement. Prime Minister Harper was pushing hard, with Minister MacKay, Minister Kenney, Mr. Sweet and many others, so it was disappointing to hear that the ambassador hadn't been fully briefed.

However, I know, and Kamila I think would speak to this if we can get her on today—to give at least a couple of minutes, I think it would be warranted—that the ambassador did call her and spoke to her directly and personally about that slip and clarified the record. He acknowledged, of course, that Huseyin is a Canadian citizen, which is why I wanted to take at least two minutes when I commenced my remarks to the committee to remind everyone that Huseyin has only flown on a Canadian passport. Most troubling is that some of the issues, and the reason he was detained, may well have arisen again because of his activities in Canada, speaking about religious freedom and religious freedom of expression.

Thank you for raising that right now. It's one of the reasons we've also always called for a special envoy. An ambassador has multi-faceted roles in any embassy, particularly in China where the relationship is so multilateral and so multi-faceted. A special envoy who would report directly to the Prime Minister, or perhaps to the committee, to say what we need to do to obtain the release and return of a Canadian citizen languishing in prison in China—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Just before my time wraps up, can I ask a quick follow-up question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Sorry, Mr. Genuis.

Your time is wrapping up very shortly.

Kamila is available now. We can have her for 30 seconds to a minute if you'd like her to—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

If she is available, I would suggest she be able to give her full testimony, not just a piece at the tail end of my time.

Can we pause the questions and have her give her testimony?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Do you mean her statement?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Yes, exactly.