Evidence of meeting #24 for Subcommittee on International Human Rights in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chinese.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
NDP
Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Thank you very much Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your testimony. This has been very helpful for us. I am a mother, and I can't even imagine the stories you've been sharing with us this week. When I heard your testimony earlier in the week, it was all I could do to not rush home and hug my children a bit closer. I certainly want to express my sympathies that this is happening.
I'm slightly overwhelmed by the testimony, to be perfectly honest. I, like many of the other members of this committee, am banned from China, because we have spoken out against the genocide happening against the Uighur people. I guess why I feel a little overwhelmed is that you raise the issue of making statements, using the Magnitsky-style sanctions and things Canada can do, and it seems so fully insufficient for what needs to be done.
I'd like to know, though, what China's response has been. The report has come out. You are speaking internationally. We've had the U.K. We've had the U.S. We've had other countries raise this and talk about this. Has China fully denied it? What has China's response been to this?
February 10th, 2023 / 1:55 p.m.
Director, Tibet Action Institute
I'll answer quickly, and maybe Sophie could follow up with how China responds.
To the specific charges about the residential boarding school system, they haven't said that much, although they have had some direct responses. They haven't responded to the UN, but they put something out some time ago. I think it was through the Canadian Chinese embassy, if I am remembering correctly.
They completely deny it, and they point to their propaganda online that shows Tibetan children learning Tibetan, or they have these slick videos that show Tibetans learning Tibetan. Quickly, people will ask how we can say that they're not learning Tibetan when here they are, learning Tibetan.
I wanted to point out—and I think all Canadians can understand this—that one Tibetan-language class being taught in Tibet to Tibetan children, where they are studying nine or 10 hours a day in Chinese, is not enough. It will not result in these young people, especially separated from their families and communities, speaking Tibetan or being Tibetan in that way.
That is one thing the Chinese government will point to, and they have pointed to their very carefully constructed propaganda and whatever else to show this, like Tibetans dancing and singing. They have some stuff online that I think is really telling propaganda. The questions these interviewers will ask the young Tibetans, either in print or in video.... The answers of the young people are quite telling of how they miss their families, how they weren't happy for a long time and how they were homesick.
It's all there, but everybody knows to be very careful in Tibet in how you express yourself to the Chinese state media.
NDP
Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Ms. Richardson, is there anything you'd like to add to that?
China Director, Human Rights Watch
Thank you.
I could add quickly that the Chinese government now reflexively rejects anything that we publish as hopelessly biased and fictional. We, as an organization, have been sanctioned, which is not really relevant, except to show that there is never a substantive conversation about the facts. The Chinese government generally continues to insist that it is merely making education maximally available to the largest number of children, and that this is all to the public good.
I think it is worth pointing out that the 2010 decision to expand access to preschool education across all Tibetan areas, and particularly in the TAR, made preschool education effectively compulsory. When we are thinking about what the knock-on effects of that are, one of them is that it is now effectively impossible to enrol your child in a school at subsequent levels if they have not been to one of the state-run preschools, whether it is a boarding school or not a boarding school. There is no option anymore. There is no meaningful option to step away from the state-run system, because it would mean, effectively, taking your child out of all education at all levels.
However, the Chinese government has been particularly disingenuous in its responses to the concerns also raised by the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, both of which have repeatedly flagged a problem with Chinese authorities since the nineties. Typically, the state's response is to respond with the number of children in the aggregate who are being educated, without answering the question about access to mother-tongue education or the denial of that right.
NDP
Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Certainly, you talked about the multilateral institutions and the multilateral fora that have looked at this. Obviously, we saw with the Uighurs that the UNHRC was not able to get that study. They were not able to get the votes to make that study go forward.
Is that a role that Canada should play? Should we be trying to work with allied countries to inoculate against the Chinese influence on other countries? Is that a role that we can play?
China Director, Human Rights Watch
I cannot urge you strongly enough to do that. Canada was very supportive of the October vote. I really hope that governments will think about that episode not as a failure but as being 18 votes closer to “yes”. You were 18 votes closer to “yes”. These things are almost never adopted on the first go. I hope everyone is suiting up, not necessarily for the March session but for June, to go right back into the council and try to run the same decision memo.
You know this: You people voted last week, beautifully, movingly—thank you—for them. Those people deserve their rights. There should be a debate in the Human Rights Council about what's happening to Uighurs and about what's happening to Tibetan children. I think leadership from the Canadian government in this regard is incredibly important.
NDP
Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Ms. Tethong, I'll just prep something for my next round. You talked a little bit about the issues of Tibetans being separate from those of Uighurs, separate from those of Mongolians, separate from those of Hong Kongers perhaps, and separate from those of Taiwan. Whatever those issues are that we're dealing with with regard to Chinese aggression, maybe in my next round—I know I'm out of time here—you could articulate how we treat Tibet as separate but also as part of this bigger issue.
I know that I can't get you to answer that right now, but it will circle around.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sameer Zuberi
Thank you for that, Ms. McPherson.
We'll continue now with Ms. Vandenbeld for five minutes.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you so much to our witnesses for this vital testimony. I do take note that it was said that China is going to great lengths to try to have an information blackout and to not let it be known what is happening to Tibetan children.
I want to particularly thank you, Dr. Lo, as a teacher with a deep caring for children, for bringing us direct and recent testimony that you saw yourself. I think it is vital for this committee to be able to hear this but also amplify it. I actually thank all the members of the committee from all parties that we were able to get your testimony squeezed into our calendar to make sure that we had an exceptional meeting today and that we could have this on the record, which I hope will go some way toward making sure this is known in the world.
Ms. Richardson mentioned an attempt at sinicization. Ms. Tethong said something about looking at all of these issues together. As you know, this committee was the committee that I think was almost first in the world, of any parliament, to study the Uighurs back in 2018 and what was happening there at a time when China was trying very hard not to have information public on this. I note that there are some eerie similarities in the surveillance and in the attempt to completely eradicate people's language and culture by taking their children. I wonder to what extent this is something that....
I think it was Ms. Tethong who said that Tibet is the canary in the coal mine. Tibet is sort of ahead. At the same time, I imagine that these techniques and the technologies are being shared and learned from. We noted with the Uighurs that it was the same governor who had been in Tibet who then went to Xinjiang.
I wonder to what extent China is using this against all its minorities in a much grander attempt to eradicate different peoples.
I'd like to start with Dr. Lo, and then perhaps each of you could answer that question.
Thank you.
Academic Researcher and Educational Sociologist, As an Individual
Thank you for your question.
Of course, over the years, when I was teaching at my former university, I had a number of such Mongolian and Uighur colleagues. We often experienced an exchange of ideas. In the university during official meetings we pretended that we didn't know each other, but in the evenings we invited each other to a certain place to have dinner together. We had that kind of experience. That experience was simply to not respond to the government's pressure on us as intellectual people.
Throughout those experiences it's clear: I can see the similarities between boarding preschools for Uighurs in Xinjiang and Tibetans in Tibet. It is exactly the same. There are no differences.
On the other hand, there are some strategic differences between China's treatment of Tibet and Uighurs. I can share with you a concrete example.
In 2017, Guanxiong Pei, a social science academic, did a social survey on what the difference is between the Tibetans and Uighurs from their perspective. He said to wipe out Tibetans from urban cities and get them back to their rural areas and then to kill all the Uighurs from every city in China. That's the kind of different attitudes they have on the Chinese people's side.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
On your own family members and the children acting like strangers in their home, I think every single parent, grandparent, aunt and uncle can relate and are mortified at that very thought. Thank you for that testimony.
Ms. Lhamo, would you like to talk a bit about the ways in which this is between different cultures and different races as well?
Community Organizer, Human Rights Activist, As an Individual
Yes, for sure.
I want to start by saying that there's cross-movement solidarity. We've seen that with the Beijing Olympics. I was actually in Greece with my Uighur and Hong Konger friends, with some of us arrested and detained in different jails, but we were together.
On the Chinese government's tactics, it's so clear that China is constantly duplicating the tactics used by other authoritarian regimes, whether it is surveillance or ripping children away from their families.
I want to emphasize this point: Tibet has been on lockdown by design since 2008. Prior to 2008, thousands of people were able to escape. We oftentimes used to get information from experts like Dr. Gyal Lo. After 2008, only a trickle of them were able to make it through. In the past years, maybe five or a handful have been able to get out.
I would like to encourage people to think about what type of information we have heard from inside of Tibet and the type of access we have. We were able to see the concentration camps in East Turkestan. We have not yet been able to see the boarding preschools. Even the UN has not reported on those in their communications so far. On the boarding preschools, we still do not know, so access, access, access....
Liberal
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Thank you, Chair.
This is obviously very moving and tragic testimony.
I want to start by asking if you know of instances or mechanisms of complicity by western corporations or consulting firms that might be involved in investing in or supplying equipment or technology for these boarding schools, and who we should be putting pressure on to end that complicity.
Anybody can answer.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sameer Zuberi
Feel free. That's for anybody. In general, if a witness has some commentary to give, even if the question has not been directed toward you, you can still contribute.
Yes, go ahead, please.
Director, Tibet Action Institute
Sophie, did you want to do the DNA, just a quick DNA link...?
China Director, Human Rights Watch
Sure. This is not specific to boarding schools, but several years ago, when we were writing about the forced collection of biodata on Uighurs, we came across procurement documents suggesting that a Massachusetts-based company, Thermo Fisher, had sold DNA sequencers to the Xinjiang authorities. It was not then, and it is not now, illegal to sell those sequencers. That doesn't mean it's a great idea, or consistent with ethics or basic human decency.
No amount of publicly beating up this company seems to have made it change its behaviour. It said it would stop selling that technology in that region. We and others subsequently found its technology being sold into the region, and it said it wasn't its fault. We could go into the details if you want.
Recently, we and others have found the same company selling the same equipment to authorities in the TAR, and we published in September showing that authorities are collecting—
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
I'm sorry. Because of the tight time, could you give us the name of the company quickly? Are there other instances of other companies or consulting...? If people don't have that information at their fingertips, I think the committee would love to receive a written follow-up submission.
I know it may seem a bit obscure, but I think one key way that we try to combat these human rights abuses is to hold accountable those who we have the capacity to hold accountable to a greater extent, because they're based in our society.
China Director, Human Rights Watch
I'll send the links to the relevant documents we've published.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Thank you.
Does anybody else want to add to this quickly? I'll the go to another topic.
Director, Tibet Action Institute
Yes, I was going to say that we are looking into who there is that we could hold accountable, whether they are entities or whatnot. One thing that's an interesting new area that's really clear for us, especially because Dr. Gyal Lo has knowledge of all these people and characters, is the intellectual architects of the second-generation ethnic policies that Xi Jinping has adopted. The people overseeing the implementation of that...not just in Tibet. They're also in East Turkestan or the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
Those people are actually sanctioned by the highest level of the state government, the central government, to go into Tibet and East Turkestan and find the fastest ways to implement, across the board, Tibetan and Uighur children speaking Mandarin, and what the best methods are, psychological and otherwise, to get them to learn faster. If you can imagine, these people to us are not academics and they're not researchers. It's next level and it's genocidal, and the individuals involved should be held accountable, especially if they are deputized.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Yes, that anticipated my next question. I think we'd be interested in getting suggestions of corporations that might be involved and are complicit in this that should be highlighted and sanctioned. We are putting pressure on our pension fund to not invest in areas that are going to be complicit.
There's also individual accountability via Magnitsky sanctions. There have been, to my knowledge, no applications of Magnitsky sanctions to individuals involved in repression in Tibet or in Hong Kong. There's been some very limited use in the context of East Turkestan.
Do you have names of individuals you could forward to the committee saying, “These are people we know are playing a role specifically around these boarding schools, and they should be held accountable via Magnitsky sanctions”? Personally, I think that a very powerful tool for deterring this kind of involvement is clearly naming names around accountability.
