Evidence of meeting #5 for Subcommittee on International Human Rights in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was china.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Uyghur Rights Activist, As an Individual
[Witness spoke in Uighur, interpreted as follows:]
Only because I am a citizen of Kazakhstan and because of the pressure put out by my children, was I able to get out of this prison. On the contrary, if I were a Chinese citizen, I would have been murdered by now.
Because of the Chinese proximity to Kazakhstan, after remaining for only 20 days in Kazakhstan, I fled to Turkey. Once in Turkey I started giving interviews. In Kazakhstan, this is impossible because of the Chinese presence and the deaths, murders, in Kazakhstan by the Chinese. It is impossible to operate in Kazakhstan.
Bloc
Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe Bloc Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
Thank you.
The Chinese government says it reintegrates people who graduate from the camps.
First, is it true? Secondly, are people ever really free after they leave the camps?
Uyghur Rights Activist, As an Individual
[Witness spoke in Uighur, interpreted as follows:]
I, myself, am a witness. I saw people detained in Chinese prisons for 15 to 20 years. Although people were released, they would be arrested and imprisoned again after a certain amount of time.
My time in prison was relatively short, but I have trouble breathing now. As you can see, my lungs aren't good. I came out with a skin disease. My health is very poor. That was my condition when I got out of prison. As you can tell, I have trouble breathing.
Uyghur Rights Activist, As an Individual
[Witness spoke in foreign language, interpreted as follows:]
I'd like to add something and ask a question, if I may.
First, I was somewhat of an interpreter. I'm fully bilingual. I speak Chinese fluently. I was a manager making roughly $2,000 a month. My circumstances were good. Did I need some sort of degree?
Second, my father, who was retired, was fluent in Chinese. He had a degree. Did he need another degree of some sort?
These are intellectuals, business people, relatively wealthy people and the like. So I ask you, do people like that need a degree?
Bloc
Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe Bloc Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
That's exactly what I wanted to hear. Thank you very much, Mr. Ali.
Liberal
NDP
Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Thank you, Chair.
I believe I'm the last questioner. I feel compelled to pass the microphone to both of our witnesses.
At this time, knowing that this is a bit of a moment for you to share, is there anything we haven't touched on today or that you feel we need to know in this committee and haven't had a chance to discuss yet? I'd just like to open it up to both of you to take a few minutes and give us anything we may have missed or any information you'd like to share with us before we conclude today.
Uyghur Rights Activist, As an Individual
[Witness spoke in Uighur, interpreted as follows:]
Once I was released from prison, I gave an interview to a BBC journalist. During my interview, I mentioned the case of the Uighur DNA sample collection. I touched on organ harvesting. I also warned about bacteriological weapons development being conducted by China. I was warning in every interview and in every meeting, be it in Japan or in the Czech Republic. At the time, nobody was paying attention to this. Suddenly, in the current context, everyone has woken up. Now they're saying, “Oh, Omerbek told us about this.” My message is that we have to pay attention to the CCP. If these atrocities don't stop, we will get even worse results, and worse is about to come.
I would like to conclude by asking that we unite our international efforts with all the various NGOs, be it Amnesty International, interparliamentary commissions or different states and like-minded countries, to stop these atrocities and unite in this anti-Chinese campaign in order to stop all that is happening. I would ask the Canadian government to be considerate of Uighur refugees stranded in third party countries like Turkey. These Uighur refugees are becoming stateless. They are facing challenges over there. On humanitarian and compassionate grounds, I would like one more time to draw your attention to this topic.
Again, thank you very much for your time.
Uyghur Rights Activist, As an Individual
[Witness spoke in Uighur, interpreted as follows:]
My plea to the Canadian government is to put pressure on the Chinese republic to, first and foremost, shut down these camps. Muslim people, Uighur people, like all ordinary people around the globe, should have access to the Internet. They should have access to phones. They should live in a dignified manner, as human beings.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
First off, let me just say from halfway around the world that we would like to thank you, Mr. Ali and Ms. Jelilova, for being with us and for your heartfelt testimony to this committee. I know that I speak on behalf of everyone here in this room, all the committee members, those watching over the Internet and our interpreters.
I do want to thank our Uighur interpreter, Kayum Masimov. Thank you for your service, sir.
I also thank our clerk for organizing this and being able to bring you to us from, as I said, halfway around the world.
We thank you.
Uyghur Rights Activist, As an Individual
[Witness spoke in Uighur, interpreted as follows:]
Thank you very much.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
Welcome, everyone.
Pursuant to the motion adopted by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development on February 20, 2020, today is the second meeting of the subcommittee on its study of the human rights situation of the Uighurs.
Today's witnesses are appearing by video conference. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. I want to thank our clerk and our technical team for assisting the witnesses with their equipment and connectivity.
Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like a regular committee meeting. You have the choice, at the bottom of your screen, of either the floor, English or French audio channel. Should any technical challenges arise, for example in relation to interpretation, or a problem with your audio arises, please advise the chair immediately and the technical team will work to resolve them.
At this point I'd like to welcome our witnesses. You'll be the final panel of this second day of this study. We're glad you're with us. Today we are going to hear from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the director of human rights initiative, Amy Lehr. Then we will have, from the Uyghur Human Rights Project, the senior program officer for research and advocacy, Dr. Elise Anderson. As an individual we have Guy Saint-Jacques, consultant and former ambassador of Canada to the People's Republic of China.
You will each have six minutes to do your introductory statement. After those statements, we will be moving to rounds of questions by the members.
With that, we will start with Amy Lehr.
Amy Lehr Director, Human Rights Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for holding this hearing and offering me an opportunity to speak. I'm happy to see you engaged on such an important and pressing topic.
As noted, I'm the director of the human rights initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a large non-partisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. Over the past year my program has been conducting research on forced labour in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, or XUAR.
Our work combined open-source research in Mandarin with interviews with those subjected to forced labour. Our findings to date have confirmed that forced labour practices in the region are part of the Chinese government's efforts to repress ethnic and religious minorities through what they call re-education. Forced labour also combines with widespread surveillance in the region.
Because China plays such a dominant role in many international supply chains, products entering the U.S., Canada, Europe and other countries are at risk of being tainted by forced labour. Today I'll explain how forced labour in XUAR is part of a larger system of ethnic minority repression and is relevant to western supply chains, and we'll provide some policy recommendations that might help effect change.
As has already been documented, the Chinese government has forcibly detained and held in extrajudicial detention facilities, also known as re-education camps, more than one million Muslim minorities in this region. The goal is to cut the minorities' ties to their religious and cultural identities and bring them into mainstream Han Chinese culture. This is seen as a way to enhance stability in the region.
The Chinese government's clampdown on ethnic minorities is believed to be the largest-scale detention of religious minorities since World War II, and according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, may amount to crimes against humanity.
In the name of combatting religious extremism and enhancing security in the region, the government subjected minority detainees to re-education and vocational training within and outside of the detention facilities. As you've probably heard earlier today, this training includes intensive Mandarin classes, praising the CCP, and in many cases, job training.
As the government goes through this process, factory work has revealed itself to be an integral element of the effort. The government has used labour transfer programs to move thousands of minorities into manufacturing positions in XUAR's factories and in other Chinese provinces where they are, in some cases, subjected to forced labour. The full extent of the forced labour is impossible to know because access to the region is so limited.
This re-education campaign is closely linked to the government's poverty alleviation and pairing programs. The poverty alleviation program seeks to move minorities from their traditional rural villages into factory work. The government requires local officials to meet quotas of rural minorities transferred to work, and that creates pressure to find people to transfer, whether or not they want to go.
Because of the high level of surveillance in XUAR and the risk of being sent to a detention camp or prison, it is presumed to be very challenging for ethnic minorities to resist transfers. The government also provides financial incentives for companies to re-educate and employ ethnic minorities. Our research and interviews indicate that at least some of those transferred to work are not doing so willingly, and are often significantly underpaid. This, in turn, raises serious forced labour concerns.
These re-education efforts and poverty alleviation programs I discussed are combined with what's called the government's pairing program. Under this program mainland Chinese provinces are partnered with specific regions of XUAR. Each pairing program has a sectoral focus based on the needs of pairing mainland firms, including the textile, electronic and agricultural sectors, among others. Those companies that are in the pairing program are pressured to open factories in XUAR and may be asked to receive minority workers, both within XUAR and in their factories in the rest of China. Some of those workers have been re-educated, some are re-educated in detention facilities and others are part of poverty alleviation. Again, because we don't have access to the region, it's really hard to know just the scope of forced labour within these programs and within these companies participating in the pairing program.
We've been doing some research on what XUAR produces. It's a key cotton producer, but it also produces and exports a number of other products, including electronics and machinery, plastics, apparel and agricultural goods. These sectors are all priorities in the pairing program. There's a question of whether this is creating a risk of forced labour in these other supply chains as well, and this deserves further research.
I just want to touch briefly on XUAR's role in global supply chains, looking particularly at textiles and apparel as a case study, because we understand those linkages better. I would note that other sectors may also include substantial components from XUAR.
XUAR produces around 20% of the world's cotton and is the third-largest producer of cashmere in China. China is the world's largest cashmere producer. We have found that XUAR directly exports few products globally. Rather, they're transformed within China, in many cases. Apparel was 25% of XUAR's international exports in 2019, and footwear was another 10%, but this severely understates XUAR's role in supply chains. Most of the cotton, for example, is shipped to other regions of China to then be incorporated into yarn, textiles, etc., and this is much, much harder to trace.
One challenge is that China is one of the world's two largest cotton producers, the world's largest yarn producer, its largest textiles producer and its largest apparel producer. Because XUAR cotton, and increasingly, yarn, are incorporated—
Director, Human Rights Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
You will have an opportunity to elaborate, I'm sure, during the question period.
Now we are going to move to Dr. Elise Anderson for six minutes.
Dr. Elise Anderson Senior Program Officer for Research and Advocacy, Uyghur Human Rights Project
Thank you.
Greetings to the members of the subcommittee. I'm very honoured to be testifying today. I'm sitting before you as an advocate for Uighur human rights, and as a scholar whose research has focused on Uighur cultural expression for more than a decade.
Just this month there's been a significant shift in expert analysis of the Uighur human rights crisis. Authoritative institutions and experts have begun to label what is happening as a campaign of probable crimes against humanity, and likely, genocide. For many years the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, has been systematically destroying the institutions that long served to maintain and pass on Uighur cultural knowledge. Uighur language journals have been shuttered. Poets and musicians have been disappeared by the hundreds. Mosques have been bulldozed, and more than one million living, breathing individuals have been taken away to camps and prisons en masse.
Recent investigations of forced labour and forced sterilization, including the alarming statistic that population growth among Uighurs in two prefectures declined by 84% between 2015 and 2018, have shed light on the government's totalizing campaign of repression.
The CCP claims it must assimilate the Uighur population to quell unrest and stamp out terrorist activity, but these are excuses that mask the horrors happening on our watch. By politically indoctrinating and forcibly assimilating Uighurs, the CCP is attempting to remove their loyalty to any source of authority other than the CCP itself. In conscripting Uighurs into involuntary work schemes and turning the Uighur region into a manufacturing hub for inexpensive labour, the CCP is securing control of Uighur lands for resource extraction and global trade, while ripping apart Uighur families and communities in the process. In other words, the relationship between the CCP and the Uighur region is, at its core, a colonial one, recalling the dark and painful histories and present circumstances of liberal democracies such as the U.S., Australia and Canada, vis-à-vis indigenous peoples.
The CCP is enacting a genocide because it is a colonizer. Land and subjugation of the local people are dual prizes in its end game. The CCP has sought totalizing control of the Uighur region since it came to power in 1949. It established autonomy in the region in 1955. That autonomy was and remains a sham.
Many Uighurs, meanwhile, profess an almost spiritual connection to this land, their homeland, something that outside observers far too often overlook in our analyses. In the 1990s, for example, as the Chinese state incentivized Uighur farmers to sell their lands, the beloved folk musician Küresh Küsen urged his brethren not to do so, singing, “The land is great. The land is mighty. The land is the source of life. Brother farmer, I beg of you, do not sell your land”.
During my own time living in the Uighur region over the past decade-plus, I was struck by how much the concepts of land and homeland still seemed to shape everyday life for Uighurs. In 2015, an acquaintance of mine and her aunt took my mother, who was visiting, and me to visit the tomb of a revered Uighur scholar near Kashgar. This tomb had long been a holy site of pilgrimage, but is now a state-designated tourist spot. At the tomb a sheik described the history to us, and we wandered the grounds where, off in the distance, beyond the tomb and the state-built museum attached to it, there lay a cemetery on a mountain of sand. Deep green poplars, the quintessential marker of the region's oasis towns, stood in stark contrast to the sea of sand that lay even further beyond it.
My acquaintance led us to a stream of clear, pure spring water, and we crouched down together. "Can't you see why people would see this place as holy?” she asked me, as she scooped spring water into a bottle. I could.
For Uighurs, their land has a sacred significance as a source of meaning and life. That land, along with the home that it inspires and the very lives that play out on it, are now under grave threat. The Uighur crisis is one of the most pressing humanitarian concerns in the world today, and it demands a multi-faceted policy response by governments and multilateral actors around the world.
I have several recommendations for Canada, which I will elaborate on in the Q and A if you're interested in taking them up.
First, focus on refugee admissions. Second, punish and deter harassment of Uighur Canadians. Third, block forced labour imports. Fourth, prohibit companies from exporting high-tech tools to China. Fifth, impose coordinated, targeted sanctions on perpetrators. Sixth, make legal determinations as to whether the Uighur crisis constitutes a genocide.
It's time for the Government of Canada to act on the global promise of “never again”.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
Thank you, Dr. Anderson.
Now we're going to hear from Monsieur Guy Saint-Jacques, Canada's former ambassador to China.
You have six minutes, sir.
Guy Saint-Jacques Consultant, Former Ambassador of Canada to the People's Republic of China, As an Individual
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me to take part in today's meeting.
Today, I'll be talking mainly about the increasing level of repression since 2012, when Xi Jinping became the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Then, I'll turn to the Canadian government's policy on China.
As you know, I spent 13 years in China, during the 1980s and 1990s, and I was Canada's ambassador to China from 2012 to 2016. I saw things in China change, including the country's economic growth and treatment of its ethnic minorities. Ever since the Qing dynasty conquered Xinjiang in the 18th century, there have always been tensions. The measures taken by the Chinese have heightened tensions, culminating in 2009 with the riots in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. The Chinese government subsequently became very concerned about the emergence of ISIS.
Keep in mind that, in 2013, China began experiencing a wave of unprecedented attacks on its territory. You may recall two high-profile attacks: the October 28, 2013, suicide car bombing in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, killing two and injuring 40; and the March 2014 mass stabbings at the Kunming railway station, killing 30 or so. China was experiencing a terrorism problem and President Xi Jinping wanted to fix it. He cited a serious threat to social stability to justify imposing extremely strict security measures in Xinjiang, including the installation of cameras, the setting up of checkpoints, the closure and destruction of mosques, the ban on beards and veils, and tight control over people's movements.
Of course, since Chen Quanguo was appointed general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party for Xinjiang in August 2016, the repression has continued, with the opening of re-education camps and the detention of at least a million Muslims.
Now I would like to talk of the Canadian experience in Xinjiang. When CIDA was active, we had a very important assistance development program that was mainly focused on the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources, but also helping women to get into business. There were a number of very successful projects in Xinjiang.
We also have had a very sad consular case inasmuch as a Canadian citizen, Mr. Huseyincan Celil, was arrested in Uzbekistan in the spring of 2006 and extradited to China. We have never been able to have consular access to him. Of course, despite this, consular officers have met members of his family during visits to Xinjiang.
I went to Xinjiang with a delegation led by Senator Plett in May 2013 as part of the activities of the Canada-China Legislative Association. We raised the case of Uighurs, our concerns. We had meetings at the Islamic centre, but it was clear that all this was staged. After the departure of the delegation, I travelled to Kashgar. I met with the family of Mr. Celil. I also made representation to the local authorities to try to improve the situation of Mr. Celil—all this to no avail.
I would add that it has become very difficult to discuss human rights issues with China since Xi Jinping came to power. We are now dealing with a China that is very confident, assertive and aggressive, that refuses to receive lists of cases of concern, and that rejects what it considers foreign interference in its affairs. Furthermore, it has succeeded in controlling the UN Human Rights Council, where even Muslim countries will refuse to condemn China for what it is doing in Xinjiang.
What should the Canadian government do? In my view, it is now impossible to remain ambivalent on China, after seeing what it is doing in Xinjiang, in Hong Kong, in the South China Sea, not to mention the heavy price that we have been paying since the arrest of Meng Wanzhou. It's very clear where Xi Jinping wants to take China, as he reported to the 19th party congress in October 2017. He said that China has succeeded without adopting western values and he gave China as a model for the world.
Of course, we need to continue to engage with China to address major global issues such as pandemics or global climate change. However, as trust has been lost, it is time to take more measures to indicate that we will take a more realistic approach in our dealings with China, one based on the protection and defence of our interests and values such as freedom of speech, of religion, and of equal opportunity for all.
We should also react quickly to cases of intimidation or interference with Canadians of Chinese origin, or Uighurs, or Tibetans living in Canada. There should be zero tolerance for such cases.
Of course, we also need to work more closely with like-minded countries to reinforce the multilateral system and to underline that rules apply equally to all. We should also agree on common positions and similar reactions when China acts as a bully or engages in hostage diplomacy. This applies also to whether sanctions should be applied against Chinese officials. We need to be in good company.
The message to China should be simple: We welcome you to play a larger role on the international scene, but you have to abide by all international treaties and rules and stop acting as a bully.
I'll be happy to answer your questions. Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
Thank you.
To all of you, thank you for your opening statements.
We'll now move to questions. In this first round, each questioner will have seven minutes.
We will start with Mr. Sweet.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON
Thank you very much, Chair.
Welcome, Mr. Saint-Jacques.
First off, thank you very much for your service to Canada. It's greatly appreciated.
You mentioned the difference in China since Xi Jinping has become the leader of the CCP. I posed this question to one of our other panels yesterday and I'd like to pose it to you.
Since the great “Yellow Emperor”, and Mao Zedong trying to take on that role and the Great Leap Forward, the multiple purges that happened under Mao Zedong, as well as the Hundred Flowers and all those incidents that cost millions of lives, we haven't seen anybody who really resembles Mao as much as Xi Jinping does. I wonder if you would share that observation.
Consultant, Former Ambassador of Canada to the People's Republic of China, As an Individual
I would agree with you. In fact, what's happened in the last few years since Xi Jinping came to power is a move going back to the Mao era in the way that propaganda is handled. The fact also is that he has dismantled the legacy of Deng Xiaoping in terms of how succession is supposed to take place. He has also slowed down the economic reforms and he's applying an approach similar to Stalin with regular purges of opponents.
Despite this, there are still some voices in the party that are against what he is doing. That's why I think that, if we are taking action to oppose China, this should help those forces fight the Communist Party to try to move the country. A number of people are very concerned by the direction that Xi Jinping has given to the country.