Mr. Speaker, Chinese people are kind and gentle people with a deep respect for family, tradition, faith and caring for the elderly. These are among the many fine qualities of their character, but they are an oppressed people, oppressed by the Chinese People's Party's communist regime in Beijing.
I make this important distinction up front. While I will be speaking today about the many alarming human rights violations committed by the Chinese Communist Party, this should never ever be mistaken for criticism of Chinese people and the many hard-working Canadians of Chinese ethnicity in my home town and across the country. It is the regime they suffer under.
Canadians have become keenly aware and increasingly concerned by the actions of the Chinese communist regime. Today, it is probably the issue I hear most from my constituents. That is why the House voted in December to strike a Special Committee on Canada-China Relations on a motion from my colleague, the hon. member for Durham. This committee has done good work. I would like to acknowledge the work of members of all parties toward the report of the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations.
I want to draw the House's attention to the abysmal human rights record of the Chinese communist regime by touching on five examples. Each could be a speech unto its own. However, these five examples underscore the long, consistent and deliberate pattern of the CCP in flouting any acceptable international standards of human rights. Simply put, the Chinese Communist Party, particularly under Xi Xi Jinping, is a ruthless, totalitarian regime that tightly controls its people and inflicts brutal oppression on its ethnic and religious minorities.
First is the Uighur Muslim minority in China. While reports of numbers vary from 1.5 to 3 million who have been detained in re-education camps by the CCP, that is one out of every 10 Uighurs in China. The accounts of life in the camps range from brainwashing to forced labour to inhumane cruelty. The very notion of concentration camps in our day should be reprehensible. How can the world turn a blind eye? During the recent coronavirus outbreak in China, the Chinese Communist Party kept the Uighurs locked up, risking certain wide spread virus outbreaks and death in the very camps. Do we even have the full story on this yet?
Maybe the longest persecution of an ethnic and religious minority by the CCP are Tibetans. I have spoken on this in this chamber and at the subcommittee on international human rights for as long as I have been elected. Again, Tibetans have a long, proud history, one that the CCP regime does not recognize and has done its best to crush. They are an impediment to the regime's goals. As a result, the CCP brutally cracks down on any behaviour that it believes promotes Tibetan culture. So brutal are its measures, that Tibetans are self-immolating in protest of the regime. It is reported that since 2009, 128 men and 28 women have set themselves on fire to protest this regime.
What have we become, that we do not shout from the rooftops and take sanctioning measures against the perpetrators of these heinous human rights violations that are so abhorrent, people will set themselves on fire?
Christians are another favourite target of the officially-atheist Communist Party. Why? Because any organized group of people is a threat to the iron grip the CCP has and wants to maintain over its citizenry. Under Xi Xi Jinping, that grip has grown even tighter. Churches are being closed, pastors are being jailed at an alarming rate and there are ever-increasing random arrests and questioning by state police.
A fourth human rights abuse is the plight of the practitioners of Falun Gong, a peaceful ancient spiritual practice. Those who practice Falun Gong in China face harsh persecution at the hands of the CCP and its police forces. If arbitrary arrests, forced labour and torture were not enough, we have had witness testimony at the subcommittee on international human rights of organ harvesting. Our former distinguished colleagues, the Hon. David Kilgour, as well as well-know human rights lawyer, David Matas, have given compelling evidence repeatedly on this practice by the CCP. Let us think about that: detaining Falun Gong, imprisoning them arbitrarily, torturing them to death and then harvesting their organs for sale.
The fifth point I would like to make is about the CCP's treatment of its own people. Even the Han Chinese, the majority of the Chinese people, live under a totalitarian regime that tightly controls everything: the Internet, the content of their conversations, the education system, everything. There is no freedom of the press. There is no freedom of religion. There is no consistent rule of law. All that is needed to be arrested is trumped up charges. The police answer only to the Chinese Communist Party apparatus.
Since Tiananmen Square in 1989, political prisoners have been detained or have disappeared at an alarming rate. Xi Jinping has extended the crackdown on dissidents and has targeted lawyers, journalists, bloggers and women's and minority advocates, from house arrest to jail time, to those who are detained and then never heard of again.
Even in plain sight, the Chinese Communist Party regime in Beijing cares little for its own people. I was struck by a heart-wrenching story of a father whose disabled son died of starvation while he was in quarantine over the coronavirus. It is but one example of that heartless regime.
In addition to these five examples of flagrant human rights abuses by the Chinese Communist Party, we have recent and direct cause for concern as Canadians. As has been noted, two Canadians, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, have been held in Chinese prisons for more than a year with the lights turned on 24-7. Moreover, the CCP has consistently weaponized its trade with Canada and other countries, consistently bullied countries in its own hemisphere and manipulated others like the DRC and Burma. It is no wonder that more and more I am hearing from Canadians who are fed up with how Canada is being treated by the CCP. They have every right to be outraged.
All that I have talked about for the last number of minutes brings me to this point. The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of persecution and cracking down on dissent. That is why the developments in Hong Kong, really since the one country, two systems agreement was signed but now at a boiling point this week, have to be of major concern to us. My colleague, the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, has already spoken eloquently about this. While the world has been preoccupied by COVID-19, China has been cracking down on Hong Kong, hoping no one will notice. On Friday, the National Congress of the Communist Party of China unilaterally instituted a national security law on Hong Kong. In response, thousands upon thousands of Hong Kongers took to the streets this week in a protest amid COVID-19. Under the watchful eye of the police, they risked everything. We are witnessing the end of the one country, two systems agreement. We are witnessing the end of Hong Kong.
The response from the Liberal government has been acquiescence and naiveté. Canada must do more than just hope for dialogue; we have a duty to the 300,000 Canadians in Hong Kong. We have a duty to the 554 fallen Canadians whose blood was spilled in defence of Hong Kong against the Japanese army in December 1941. They fought against overwhelming odds. There are 283 Canadians from that battle who remain in the Sai Wan War Cemetery. We have a duty to them. We are a leading democracy in the world. We stand up for human rights, democracy and freedom. What have we become? How can Canada just stand by? On behalf of 300,000 Canadians, out of respect for the Canadian blood that has been spilled in Hong Kong, and for all those who believe in human rights and freedom, having not forgotten how the CCP, under Xi Jinping, has treated Uighurs, Tibetans, minority Christians, practitioners of Falun Gong and self-respecting democracies around the world, we must act now.
I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “the First Report of the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations, presented on March 11, 2020, be not now concurred in, but that it be recommitted to the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations with instruction
(a) to amend the same so as to make recommendations reflecting a broader assessment of the evolving situation facing pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong; and
(b) to meet within one week of the adoption of this order in order to consider this matter, provided that, if the House stands adjourned at the time the committee meets and certain standing committees have been empowered to meet by video or teleconference during that adjournment period, the shared and relevant provisions applying to those standing committees shall also apply to the committee and during the same timeframe, the committee may continue to meet for the same from time to time.”