Madam Chair and members of this committee, thank you for welcoming me today.
I'm here to shed light on how Canada's trade with China can be and is complicit in Uyghur genocide. As many Canadians have learned over the past few years, the Chinese Communist Party has been committing a genocide against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims who live in East Turkestan, also known as Xinjiang. Since 1949, the CCP has worked to eradicate Uyghur people due to their different ethnicity and religion and with the ulterior motive of stealing and monopolizing the natural resources of the region.
This human rights crisis is creeping its way into our Canadian borders in the form of clothes, textiles, tomatoes, solar panels, EV batteries and so much more.
Reports indicate that over three million innocent Uyghurs are currently detained in concentration camps, where they face indoctrination, forced labour and torture in varying degrees. Testimonies from camp survivors like Gulbahar Jelilova, Tursunay Ziyawudun, Omir Bekali and others are too horrifying to repeat here today.
SDIR, the Subcommittee on International Human Rights, and our Parliament have recognized the CCP's treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic people of East Turkestan as a genocide. Consequently, Canada can no longer do business as usual with China.
The International Labour Organization defines “forced labour” as the exaction of “work or service...from any person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily.”
It is clear that Uyghurs are not voluntarily offering to work. On the contrary, they're forced to by the CCP out of fear that if they refuse, they and their entire families will be punished, or, worse, sent to concentration camps. It's estimated that more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of East Turkestan to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019. Some of them were sent directly from detention camps. Uyghurs who live in factories away from home are forced to go through ideological training, are under constant surveillance and are forbidden religious observances.