Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Pierrefonds—Dollard.
Today is Diwali. I want to first of all wish my wife and two boys, who are celebrating tonight in Toronto, a happy Diwali. Diwali is the festival of light. It is the triumph of light over darkness. When we talk about light over darkness, I think that is actually an apt metaphor for what we are talking about today. We are talking about shedding light on a global situation that has thus far not garnered enough international attention from western governments, literally across the board.
I am speaking about the debate we are having this evening about the deplorable human rights situation of Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in East Turkestan. I use that term quite deliberately, because part of the propaganda exercised by the People's Republic of China is to refer to this area as Xinjiang or the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, but for the folks who live there and have made it their home for many years, it is known as East Turkestan.
The situation is outright deplorable. We have heard commentary in this vein thus far in tonight's debate. It is an outright attack on religion under the auspices of rooting out extremism. We have heard reference to the subcommittee on international human rights, and I want to go to a report that was done not one Parliament, but two Parliaments ago by that subcommittee. It was rendered on December 19, 2018, by the subcommittee on international human rights. I am going to read part of a section of the report that talked about what was taking place. This was four years ago, and we know that the situation has only worsened since.
In section A, paragraph 3, the report reads:
While prohibitions on outward displays of religion had formerly applied only to public sector workers and to students, “now, an entire religion is criminalized.” Witnesses described prohibitions on a wide array of religious practices or expressions of Islam through anti-terror legislation. This includes a prohibition on facial hair and religious clothing. Individuals with names bearing religious significance have been forced to change their names. Qurans, religious literature and prayer mats kept at home are confiscated. Keeping Islamic dietary practices is prohibited. Halal signs are now illegal, and restaurants must stay open during Ramadan. It is also prohibited to teach Islam to children. Individuals have been detained for praying five times a day and for circulating religious text among family. Most mosques have been demolished; the Muslim call to prayer is no longer heard. Effectively, outward displays of faith among Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic Muslims in the XUAR have effectively stopped.
I read that out in its entirety because it carries a lot of impact in terms of helping members of this House to understand and in terms of helping Canadians watching these parliamentary proceedings to understand exactly what is transpiring. Again, this report was rendered at the end of December 2018.
We understand this attack on Muslims in the People's Republic as part of a broader sweep of attacks. I am sure that if they have not come up yet, they are going to come up in the context of tonight's debate: attacks on Hong Kong democracy protesters, attacks on people who dare to practise Falun Gong and are members of Falun Gong, attacks on Tibetan Buddhists, of whom I represent several thousand in my riding of Parkdale—High Park, whose linguistic, religious and cultural traditions are being repressed and actively attacked. That has been the status quo since 1959.
The repression of Tibetan religious practices dates back over 60 years. The repression, in its acute form, of Uighur Muslims dates over the last 20 years, also outlined in that subcommittee report.
What is interesting is that it also spills over, so we are not talking just about an internal domestic situation within the People's Republic of China. There is pressure exercised on nations that are largely dependent economically on China to deport Uighurs back to the PRC, so they can effectively undergo persecution under the guise of re-education. There is targeting of Uighurs here in Canada, Uighurs like Mehmet Tohti, whose name has been mentioned before, who dare to speak up or to try to reach out and contact their loved ones, who have effectively disappeared into camps in China.
There is the targeting of others here, such as Tibetans, some of whom are my constituents. One of them, whom I want to mention by name, has decided not to be silenced and not to let attacks or surveillance or harassment or bullying diminish her voice. In fact, that woman, even today, is running for municipal office in the city of Toronto.
Her name is Chemi Lhamo. She is a former intern who served in my office. She is a very proud Tibetan Canadian and a very strong advocate. I salute her for having the courage to not be silenced but to continue to advocate for the causes she believes in and for seeking public office this very evening through a city council seat in Parkdale—High Park.
The human rights violations also raise grave concerns because they harken back to a different time. What am I speaking about here? I am speaking about the massive detention camps that we have learned about through human rights accounts, through parliamentary studies and through the debates that are entering this chamber this very evening. These detention camps are occurring as we speak in the People's Republic of China, housing, by some accounts, hundreds of thousands of Uighurs. By other accounts, over a million Uighurs are being housed in these detention camps.
People have used the term “concentration camps”. That harkens back to only one thing for every one of us in this chamber. That harkens back to World War II Europe and the devastation and horrific human rights abuses that were wrought by the Third Reich at that time, yet that is what we are talking about in 2022 on this planet in a country in Asia in the People's Republic of China.
What is taking place in these camps? Again, I am going to go back to this report. I am in chapter C, paragraph 17. It talks about these camps, political re-education camps. A witness named Mr. Byler described sessions where detainees were forced to publicly denounce their past crimes such as studying the Quran, learning Arabic or travelling abroad. Those who did not fully comply faced harsh punishment, including psychological measures designed to break the detainees, including the targeting of their families, their masculinity or forcing them to eat pork.
I want members to digest that. I apologize for the pun, but it is the idea of openly violating a person's religious traditions in the name of re-educating someone out of their Islamic practices, in violation of strict religious dietary laws. The punishments include beatings, stress positions and isolation. This is what is transpiring right now. This is what we are speaking about.
In these final few minutes, I want to talk about the reproductive rights of people in East Turkestan. We have heard about forced sterilization. Forced sterilization and, indeed, forced abortions were cited by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in a report that is dated this year, August 22, 2022. What they talk about is forced sterilization.
We have heard about the definition of genocide. I am going to cite it now. I do this having been a UN war crimes prosecutor on the Rwandan genocide. I think it is important to turn back to how genocide is defined. A genocide is defined in the UN convention under article II as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” and then it lists five different indicia. The fourth is “Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”.
There is only one way to characterize a forced sterilization or a forced abortion. The rates of population growth among Uighurs in East Turkestan are one-sixth of what they are in the rest of the People's Republic of China. We know what is going on. If that can be proven as evidence and successfully prosecuted, that amounts to genocide. That is why this debate is important. That is why what this motion calls for is important.
Let me finish on this motion because it calls for understanding the pressure that Uighurs in third countries are facing in terms of their fear of deportation and making sure that Canadian immigration measures are supple and flexible enough to accept these individuals. I say this quite emotionally. We heard the member opposite talk about those who have faced safe haven or received safe haven in this country. I include myself among those persons. Fifty years ago, I came here as a Ugandan Asian refugee at the age of 10 months, fleeing the persecution of a guy named Idi Amin Dada, who decided that there was no place for Asians in Uganda at that time. If Canada did not open its doors then, I would not be standing here today.
Canada has a moral duty and an obligation to ensure we continue that humanitarian tradition. Doing so through immigration measures, such as those being proposed today, is one way we can do exactly that and show the world that the persecution being faced by Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in the People's Republic is unjust and cannot be countenanced. To go back to the metaphor of light over darkness, that is the light that we need to shine today.