Canada’s ambassador to China expressed concern over documented human rights violations against Uyghurs with top officials during a visit to Xinjiang, sparking criticism from the Chinese Embassy in Canada that said her concerns were based on “fabricated rumors and reports with ulterior motives.”
Ambassador Jennifer May visited the far-western region on June 19-22 and met with Xinjiang Party Secretary Ma Xingrui and other senior regional government officials, according to a statement issued by Global Affairs Canada, the government department that manages diplomatic relations.
Very few Western diplomats have visited Xinjiang in recent years. It was the first visit to the region by a Canadian diplomat in 10 years. Last August, a group of diplomats from Mexico, Pakistan, Iran and other countries visited the region as part of a government-sponsored tour.
May went to Xinjiang as part of Canada’s diplomatic engagement with China and to raise concerns “over credible reports of systematic violations of human rights occurring in Xinjiang” affecting Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples, the statement said.
Specific concerns included restrictions on Uyghur-language education and the forced placement of Uyghur children in boarding schools, it said, but did not provide detail about the places May visited or what she saw.
In February 2021, Canada’s House of Commons passed a motion declaring the Chinese government’s mistreatment of Uyghurs — including the arbitrary detention of Uyghurs in state-sponsored camps, the use of Uyghur forced labor, the suppression of Uyghur religious practices, and the forced sterilization of women — a genocide.
May also repeated Canada’s calls for China to allow U.N. independent experts unfettered access to all regions of the country, including Xinjiang, the statement said.
“Until an independent investigation team can visit, assess the situation, and release an unbiased report, Canada is signaling that China's propaganda and staged displays showing Uyghurs as content are ineffective and disregarded,” said Memet Tohti, executive director of the Ottawa-based Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project.
A 2022 report by the then-U.N. Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet, who visited Xinjiang, found that China's mass detentions of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the region may constitute crimes against humanity. Uyghur rights groups criticized the tightly organized trip as a staged tour.
Beijing has denied accusations of severe rights violations.
May's visit coincided a call by international human rights organizations and Uyghur advocacy groups on June 20 for the U.N.'s current human rights chief, Volker Türk, to provide a public update of measures taken by the Chinese government and his office to address the situation in Xinjiang.
‘Same old rhetoric’
On Monday, the Chinese Embassy in Canada issued a statement saying that Canada "repeated the same old rhetoric, expressing so-called concerns based on fabricated rumors and reports with ulterior motives, without mentioning what Ambassador May really saw and heard in Xinjiang."
The embassy urged Canada to be objective and unbiased and to show Canadians what May saw during her visit. It also said that Xinjiang enjoys social stability, economic prosperity, ethnic unity and religious harmony.
“Human rights of people of all ethnic groups, including their right to use and advance their own ethnic languages, are fully protected,” the embassy said.
“Canada has repeatedly made unwarranted remarks about other countries’ human rights situation, while turning a blind eye to its own racial issues,” the embassy went on to say, citing systemic racial discrimination and unfair treatment of indigenous people, homeless people whose rights are not protected, and racial discrimination against Black civil servants in the federal government.
Canada has long upheld human rights protections and has voiced its concerns about them periodically, said John Packer, a law professor and director of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa.
“This has been a contentious part of the relationship because China does not share the same perspective and considers these issues a matter of internal affairs, feeling it is inappropriate for Canada to raise them,” he told Radio Free Asia.
Because Canada and China are parties to international treaties, including human rights agreements such as the U.N. Charter and the Genocide Convention, they are bound by certain multilateral standards, making it legitimate to discuss such matters in international forums and in bilateral relations, Packer said.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.