Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I would support democracies running for Human Rights Council membership. I would leave no seat or committee uncontested. I would leave no review unattended. What else? I think there should be strong support given to independent civil society groups, including those based in Canada, to participate in reviews of the Chinese government on multiple different levels.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I can't encourage you strongly enough to pursue that strategy, to find all of the allies you possibly can. It was an unusual group that signed on in October, and I think more could be gained from having more diverse supporters. I think it takes a certain diplomatic initiative at the highest level, again, to match Xi Jinping's ambition and to push back against that.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I'll just add quickly that we've looked at this issue in Canada and a couple of other democracies with respect to Chinese government threats to academic freedom, in countries like Canada, the U.S., etc. It's largely been about the freedom that students and scholars of and from China have to participate in university life and in debates and research, free of interference.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I couldn't agree more. This is a highly centralized political system, and it's also one that takes seriously the level of government from which a critique is coming. While I thought it was wonderful to see Prime Minister Trudeau at the vote last week, it would be equally important to hear him direct a critique to Xi Jinping specifically on this issue and many others.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  That is correct.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Sure. I think the key is for other governments, and particularly democracies, to match and exceed the ambition, the discipline and the resources that Xi Jinping is devoting to destroying human rights inside and outside the country. The UN efforts matter partly because they are about holding the Chinese government to the same standards that you, presumably, would want the Canadian government to be held to and that governments have freely agreed to.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  We would be happy to share the details of all of the reporting we've done on educational policy, abuses related to it and sinicization more broadly across the region, if that would be helpful. Many of those documents also include—as Mr. Genuis was asking—the names of the relevant officials.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  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.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I'll send the links to the relevant documents we've published.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  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.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  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.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you. Human Rights Watch has done quite a bit of research about the surveillance state across China and the ability of authorities to monitor virtually any and all electronic communications but also, indeed, to use tools to track people's movement. I think it's fair to say that the Tibetan plateau is awash with this kind of technology.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I was much too efficient. My apologies. Congress is terribly strict. Perhaps, then, I can fill in some of the details. The Chinese government, we think, accomplished the implementation of these policies partly through some very deliberate ambiguity about what teachers and schools were meant to do, but often when faced with, for example, access to teaching materials that were Chinese-medium only, schools had no choice but to use those materials since Tibetan-medium materials simply weren't available to people.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Mr. Chair, thank you so much for having me on behalf of Human Rights Watch. We appreciate the opportunity to participate. I also want to pass our congratulations on regarding the extraordinary passage of M-62 last week, which was a wonderful effort to behold. Human Rights Watch began tracking language-medium education issues in Tibetan areas more than a decade ago, when proposals to phase out Tibetan-medium instruction in Tibetan areas of Qinghai province prompted protests that were crushed.

Canada-China Relations committee  It's all of the above. I have not yet written something on this. You're prompting me to commit to doing that and sharing it with you.