China fights back with sanctions on academics, institute

2021/03/29 Leave a comment

No surprise. Pleased that we were able to pressure steering committee members of International Metropolis to abandon holding their 2020 conference in Beijing:

The imposition of tit-for-tat sanctions on researchers by China after the European Union imposed bans on Chinese officials, has ratcheted up pressure on academics, particularly those whose research involves topics deemed sensitive to China.

Experts said the sanctions further narrow the space for China research and increase fears in the academic community that China could target more overseas academics in future because of their China-linked work. 

On Friday China announced sanctions against four organisations and nine individuals in the UK, mainly parliamentarians but also including Joanne Smith Finley, a reader in Chinese studies at Newcastle University, for what the Chinese foreign ministry called “maliciously spreading lies and information” about Xinjiang.

Smith Finley said on Friday: “It seems I am to be sanctioned by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government for speaking the truth about the Uyghur tragedy in Xinjiang, and for having a conscience. Well so be it. I have no regrets for speaking out and I will not be silenced.”

Newcastle University said in a statement: “Academic freedom underpins every area of research at Newcastle University and is essential to the principles of UK higher education. Dr Jo Smith Finley has been a leading voice in this important area of research on the Uyghurs and we fully support her in this work.”

Andreas Fulda, associate professor at the University of Nottingham in the UK and an expert in Europe-China relations, said via Twitter that “this uncalled-for escalation by the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] means that there cannot be ‘business as usual’ for British academia. We need to start a vigorous debate about how to deal with the CCP’s political censorship. Self-censorship is not an option.”

This latest announcement came three days after China named two researchers – Adrian Zenz, a German expert on Xinjiang who is currently senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in the United States, who has been targeted by China recently; and Björn Jerdén, director of the Swedish National China Centre at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm – as well as an entire institution, the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), as being barred, along with their families, from visiting China, Hong Kong and Macao, it was announced on Tuesday.

MERICS is one of Europe’s biggest China research institutions with over 30 scholars and specialists on China affairs turning out major reports.  

“They and companies and institutions associated with them are also restricted from doing business with China,” China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. 

The ban comes as the EU on 21 March imposed its first sanctions on China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, imposing travel bans and asset freezes against four Chinese officials and one organisation over the mass persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. In coordinated action, the United Kingdom and Canada this week also announced sanctions on Xinjiang officials.

China’s official Global Times newspaper claimed Jerdén “fabricated rumours about Confucius Institutes describing them as China’s ‘brainwashing’ tools and ‘espionage’ institutions”. 

Jerdén has firmly rejected “the sweeping and groundless charges” that he had been spreading ‘lies and disinformation’.

“China’s sanctions against scholars and thinktanks are unprecedented but not surprising,” Jerdén said via Twitter. The Chinese Communist Party “has made clear that it doesn’t tolerate independent research on China”.

Jerdén also alluded to the tightening space for China research, saying: “It has become difficult to do research about China without interference from the Chinese government. As China becomes more important around the world, this highlights the need for a strong and independent China research community in Europe.”

“It is completely unacceptable that China imposes sanctions on academics who conduct free and open research,” said Marie Söderberg, chairperson of the board of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, where Jerdén works, in a statement issued on Tuesday. Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Ann Linde also denounced the ban on researchers. 

Targeting of a research institute

Global Times claimed MERICS “has actually been colluding with anti-China forces over the years since it was established in 2013”. 

MERICS said in a statement on Monday that “MERICS very much regrets this decision and rejects the allegations”. 

“As an independent research institute, we are dedicated to fostering a better and more differentiated understanding of China. We will continue to pursue this mission by presenting fact-based analysis, also with the aim of creating opportunities for exchanges and dialogue – even in difficult times,” it said.

But academics note that the sanctions went beyond tit-for-tat action. In a separate editorial on 23 March, Global Times said MERICS was sanctioned not simply because of its research but because “it is the largest Chinese research centre in entire Europe. Cutting off ties with China means its research channel will hardly be sustainable and its influence will be critically hit.”

Sheena Greitens, associate professor and expert on East Asia at the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin in the United States, said that in the past the party state used “uncertainty” to get people to self-police. Beijing “is now making parameters much more clear” with its statement that it wants to cut off MERIC’s research pipeline, she said. 

“Repression tactics against China scholars used to be ‘rare but real’. They are increasingly not rare,” said Greitens. 

The blanket targeting of an entire research institute is “something entirely new”, said Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute, a think tank in Berlin, Germany. He said the move was designed to intimidate other China scholars in the West into reining in criticism of the Communist Party.

Rory Truex, assistant professor at Princeton University in the US and an expert on authoritarianism and repression in China, said: “This does constitute a real shift in rhetoric and has implications for China studies. The [Communist] Party is now making it explicit that if you study the wrong thing, you will face consequences.”

Directors of a range of major European research institutes and China studies centres at universities said in a statement this week: “We are deeply concerned that targeting independent researchers and civil society institutions undermines practical and constructive engagement by people who are striving to contribute positively to policy debates. This will be damaging not only for our ability to provide well-informed analysis but also for relations more broadly between China and Europe in the future.

“We believe that mutual dialogue is crucial, especially at difficult times, and deeply regret the inclusion of academic researchers and civil society institutions in the current tensions. We will stand by our colleagues who have been targeted this way.”

China’s sanctions, announced on 22 March, also included European parliamentarians pushing for action on the rights of the Uyghur Turkic minority in Xinjiang, as well as those pushing for changes in China’s policy on Taiwan which it claims as a Chinese province, and rights agencies and organisations which the Chinese government considers to have been “interfering in China’s internal affairs for a long time.”

China also sanctioned the Political and Security Committee of the European Council, the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament and the Alliance of Democracies Foundation in Denmark.

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post-nl.php?story=20210325144041486

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Neve: We need a human rights game plan for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics

2021/03/17 2 Comments

Good suggestions. Latest Angus-Reid poll shows 55 percent support boycott compares to 27 percent opposed:
As the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing draw nearer – less than eleven months to go – calls for a boycott grow.

Every day, grave human rights violations suffocate freedom in Hong Kong; brutalize Tibetan, Falun Gong, pro-democracy and other prisoners because of who they are or what they believe; and jeopardize the survival of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. Worry for unjustly imprisoned Canadians, including Huseyin Celil, Sun Qian, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor – and four Canadians currently sentenced to death in China – is top of mind. Understandably, there is much debate about holding the Olympics in a country responsible for a human rights crisis of this magnitude.

Immediately there is pushback. We hear indignation that a boycott politicizes the Olympics. But concern for universal human rights is anything but political. These are international obligations binding on all nations, including China.

The Olympic Charter itself affirms that: “The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” Surely championing universal human rights is true to the essence of that vision.

What is particularly galling is for governments and the Olympic movement to dismiss boycott calls as inappropriate, then go no further. That is an utter abdication of responsibility. Boycott or not, there must be a forceful human-rights game plan for these Olympics.

With the House of Common’s recognition of China’s genocide against the Uyghurs; with an iron grip of repression closing around Hong Kong; with Canadians unjustly locked up in Chinese prisons; and with the Chinese government determined to bask in a favourable international spotlight – if this is not the time to sharpen the world’s focus, build pressure, and set out clear expectations for human rights change in China, when will that time be?

Here is the beginning of a three-part game plan for Canada.

First, work with other governments to hold China accountable within the United Nations human rights system. The UN Human Rights Council is in session and will meet two more times before the flame is lit in Beijing. Governments need to find their resolve and use the world’s premier human rights body to call out one of the world’s most egregious human rights violators.

Second, take steps that are readily available. Canadian law and policy already provide for a range of meaningful measures such as more robust bans on products made through forced labour; targeted sanctions on Chinese government officials; concrete initiatives to protect activists in Canada facing threats for their Chinese human rights advocacy; and dedicated programs for refugees fleeing this repression. House of Commons committees on the Canada-China relationship, international human rights and immigration have explored and proposed those and other recommendations in recent months. It is time for action.

And third, all stakeholders need human rights-focused Olympics strategies. That includes the government, the Canadian Olympic Committee, media, corporate sponsors and individual athletes.

There needs to be a coherent response with other governments, including maintaining pressure with respect to key human rights concerns throughout the lead-up to and during the Olympics. Coordinated decisions as to which officials will attend and who will pointedly stay away from the lavish opening ceremony should be publicized.

Attention will be needed to ensure that journalists have freedom and are encouraged to report about China’s human rights reality. Similarly, marketing campaigns cannot gloss over China’s grim human rights record. Television networks with Olympic broadcast rights, and companies paying big bucks to use the logo, need to figure out how they will lift up human rights.

And there must be assurances of safety and support for individual athletes who will feel compelled by conscience to show solidarity.

If governments and the Olympic movement are going to rebuff boycott suggestions, it is incumbent upon them to demonstrate they are nonetheless committed to addressing the harrowing human rights backdrop behind the Beijing Games’ fanfare.

This is not playing politics. It is about respecting what the Olympics aspire to be.

Above all, it is about honouring the Uyghur people, the people of Hong Kong, Tibetans, Mongolians, Falun Gong practitioners, democracy campaigners, human rights defenders, journalists, labour activists, imprisoned Canadians, and countless others.

For them, the Olympic flame offers no inspiration or comfort.  For them, we must set the flame ablaze with concern, solidarity and action for human rights.

Alex Neve is a Senior Fellow with the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

Source: Neve: We need a human rights game plan for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics

Latest Angus-Reid poll showing 55 percent favouring a boycott, 27 percent opposed.

Source: https://angusreid.org/china-meng-kovrig-spavor-trial/

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Mendes: We say ‘never again,’ then it happens again in China and we do almost nothing

2021/03/17 Leave a comment

Good op-ed by Errol Mendes:

We are witnessing what we’d hoped would “never again” happen after the Second World War: There is compelling evidence that over a million Uyghurs are being detained in Xinjiang, China.

While the Chinese government claims the detention camps are in fact vocational or training camps, the detainees are subjected to propaganda sessions, forced labour, and physical abuse, including gang rapes, according to credible news reports.

There’s also evidence that the Chinese government is trying to reduce the numbers of this ethnic and religious group through enforced birth control.

I agree with former Justice minister Irwin Cotler that we should join the U.S. and other countries in imposing targeted sanctions against key planners of the mass detention of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

I have suggested in Canadian Parliament that sanctions should target the architects of the suppression and detention of the Uyghurs. Such sanctions could target governor Shohrat Zakir of Xinjiang, and the region’s party chief, Chen Quanguo, who’s a member of the politburo of the party in the highest ranks of the Chinese government. Both have asserted that these allegations, of what amount to serious international crimes against the Uyghurs, are fabricated lies and absurd. Zakir goes further by describing the camps as boarding schools where the rights of the “students” are protected.

In 2017, Parliament passed the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, which implements the Magnitsky targeted sanctions that allow Canada to freeze the assets and ban the travel of human-rights abusers and corrupt officials around the world. Similar laws have been adopted by the U.S., the U.K., and many European countries, and the European Union is considering adopting a law for the whole region. The law was championed by Bill Browder, the global human-rights and anti-corruption campaigner whose lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was murdered by Russian officials.

In an interview in the Globe and Mail, Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the UN, said the federal government must consider the consequences, including possible retaliation, before imposing sanctions on senior Chinese officials for violating the human rights of minority groups. I agree with him that a government can never afford to engage in non-consequential thinking or actions that could threaten our two Canadians, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, or engage in further trade actions that could threaten our agricultural and lumber exports.

However, Canadian society can’t bend its foundational commitments to the rule of law to the laws practised by China and other dictatorships. We can’t ignore our oft-stated commitments to the promotion and protection of universal human rights embodied in the promise of “never again.” We can’t just stand by while, yet again, crimes against humanity are committed, including genocide, torture, and brutal violence and rape against women detainees.

When we stay silent or don’t act in the face of these atrocities, we forfeit our right to be regarded as champions of the equal dignity and rights of all peoples on the world stage. History has shown that silence is the complicit partner to genocide. Canada can’t stand by while genocidal acts and crimes against humanity take place in Myanmar, China, or elsewhere. By forcing birth control on the Uyghurs, the Chinese government is committing both crimes against humanity and genocide.

The officials who I suggest we target for their involvement in the detention, subjugation, and forced birth control in Xinjiang may not want to travel to Canada or have any assets here to be frozen, but the signal we send with the targeted sanctions to, not just China, but the entire world, is that we’re acting on behalf of humanity. They’re meant to bestow pariah status on those at the highest levels of the Chinese government.

Our traditional allies should be urged to follow suit, and even consider doing it jointly with us. As for China’s possible retaliation, “the two Michaels” are already paying the price with their detention and imminent trial. Their fate is sealed as long as Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou isn’t freed.

Canada must develop a longer-term strategy and policy for China that addresses both the country’s “hostage diplomacy” and the use of trade punishments that are substantially in violation of global trade rules under the World Trade Organization.

As China breaches international norms and laws, Canada and its government must develop a long-term strategy with our traditional democratic allies, especially the European Union and the new Biden administration in the U.S. The goal of such a coalition would be the economic, social, and multilateral deterrence of, not only the use of hostage diplomacy by China and other countries, but also China’s ability to target democratic countries that are bound by their values, principles, and constitutions to adhere to the rule of law and the promotion and protection of universal human rights.

U.S. President Joe Biden has already promised to hold a global democracy summit to renew the spirit and shared purpose of the nations of the free world. Yet again, the risk is high that authoritarian China will collude with similar powers to make the entire democratic world cower in fear of them.

Canada could urge such a summit, where measures can be agreed on to subject Chinese global companies to national-security, human-rights, and anti-corruption scrutiny, and to penalize them for complicity in their state’s serious international crimes.

We need government, private-sector, and civil-society partnerships to oppose hostage diplomacy and impunity for the most serious international crimes. Such coalitions could build on the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance, comprised of Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, which functions well already. The commitment to the rule of law — and respect for the equal dignity and rights of all peoples, which underlies the alliance of truly democratic nations — is under attack from authoritarian leaders around the world. Canada can’t acquiesce or stand by in this assault on democracy around the world.

Source: We say ‘never again,’ then it happens again in China and we do almost nothing

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Romney: The Right Way to Boycott the Beijing Olympics

2021/03/16 Leave a comment

Useful suggestion regarding alternative to athlete boycott by Senator Romney but one that requires buy-in by governments and corporate sponsors to have impact. Whether governments and corporate sponsors will have the courage and ethics to do so remains in question, including the Canadian government and sponsors:

As the Beijing Olympic Games approach, it is increasingly clear that China, under the control of the Chinese Communist Party does not deserve an Olympic showcase. Because it is too late to move the Winter Games scheduled for Beijing next February, some have proposed, understandably, that the United States boycott the Games.

China deserves our condemnation. The Chinese Communist Party has reneged on its agreement to allow Hong Kong self rule; it has brutally suppressed peaceful demonstrators and incarcerated respected journalists. It is exacting genocide against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities; Uighur women are forcefully sterilized or impregnated by Han Chinese men. Adults, ripped from their families, are sentenced into forced labor and concentration camps. Among ethnic Chinese, access to uncensored broadcast news and social media is prohibited. Citizens are surveyed, spied upon and penalized for attending religious services or expressing dissent.

Prohibiting our athletes from competing in China is the easy, but wrong, answer. Our athletes have trained their entire lives for this competition and have primed their abilities to peak in 2022. When I helped organize the Salt Lake City Games in 2002, I gained an understanding of the enormous sacrifice made by our Olympic hopefuls and their families. It would be unfair to ask a few hundred young American athletes to shoulder the burden of our disapproval.

It could also be counterproductive. The Olympic Games aren’t just a showcase for the host nation, but a platform for values both American and universal. If our athletes skip the Games, millions of young Americans at home might skip watching it. And the Olympic Games are one of the most enduring demonstrations of the great qualities of the human spirit on the world stage: We witness determination, sacrifice, patriotism, endurance, sportsmanship. We would also lose the global symbolism of our young American heroes standing atop the medals podium, hand to their hearts, as “The Star-Spangled Banner” plays on Chinese soil.

Moreover, if an athlete boycott is meant to influence the behavior of the home country or delegitimize its government, it probably won’t work. When President Jimmy Carter applied an athlete boycott to the Moscow Olympics in 1980, the result was more medals for Russians and dashed dreams for American athletes. No one seriously believes it improved Soviet behavior.

So if we shouldn’t forbid American athletes from competing, then how should we meaningfully repudiate China’s atrocities? The right answer is an economic and diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics. American spectators — other than families of our athletes and coaches — should stay at home, preventing us from contributing to the enormous revenues the Chinese Communist Party will raise from hotels, meals and tickets. American corporations that routinely send large groups of their customers and associates to the Games should send them to U.S. venues instead.

Rather than send the traditional delegation of diplomats and White House officials to Beijing, the president should invite Chinese dissidents, religious leaders and ethnic minorities to represent us.

An economic and diplomatic boycott should include collaboration with NBC, which has already done important work to reveal the reality of the Chinese Communist Party’s repression and brutality. NBC can refrain from showing any jingoistic elements of the opening and closing ceremonies and instead broadcast documented reports of China’s abuses.

We should enlist our friends around the world to join our economic boycott. Limiting spectators, selectively shaping our respective delegations and refraining from broadcasting Chinese propaganda would prevent China from reaping many of the rewards it expects from the Olympics.

Finally, America and the nations of the free world need to have a heart-to-heart with the International Olympic Committee. The I.O.C. has hoped that awarding Games to repressive regimes would tend to lessen their abuses. But hope has too often met a different reality — in Hitler’s Germany, Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China. In authoritarian states, the Olympics has more often been a tool of propaganda than a lever of reform.

Let us demonstrate our repudiation of China’s abuses in a way that will hurt the Chinese Communist Party rather than our American athletes: reduce China’s revenues, shut down their propaganda, and expose their abuses. An economic and diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics — while proceeding with the Games — is the right answer.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/opinion/politics/beijing-olympics-mitt-romney.html

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US-based academic faces lawsuit for research into Uighurs

2021/03/15 Leave a comment

Of note:

Companies in China’s Xinjiang province are said to have filed a domestic civil lawsuit against a high-profile United States-based academic whose research into the treatment of China’s Turkic minority Uighur population, including alleged forced labour, has angered the Chinese authorities. 

The reported lawsuit, which the Chinese government has said it supports, appears to be a new way to attempt to silence scholars and critics abroad, experts said.

Chinese official media said this week “a number of enterprises and individuals” in Xinjiang “have directed lawyers to sue German national Adrian Zenz”, the official Global Times newspaper and China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported on Tuesday without naming the companies or individuals. 

The companies and individuals are said to have filed a civil lawsuit with a local court in Xinjiang, demanding that Zenz apologise, restore their reputation and compensate them for their losses.

“Local people said that Zenz spread ‘forced labour’ and other rumours related to Xinjiang, which damaged their reputation and caused them to suffer economic losses,” official media said. 

Zenz, formerly from the European School of Culture and Theology in Korntal in Germany but now a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in the US, and other academics and journalists have written several hard-hitting reports since 2018 based on satellite imagery and official Chinese documents on the treatment of Uighurs, including documenting rights violations and the detention of up to a million Uighurs in huge camps in Xinjiang.

Mass internments in Xinjiang are believed to have begun in 2017. The Chinese government has repeatedly denied such reports, referring to the camps as “re-education centres”.

Sheena Greitens, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who has researched censorship and self-censorship among China academics at overseas universities, said “a lawsuit vs a researcher in a Chinese court is a new tactic” in China’s policing of the boundaries of academic research. 

Greitens said via Twitter that she was interested in who claims damages and how, “but [the] bigger issue is a potential deterrent effect on academic research”.

Forced labour

More than 570,000 Uighurs have been pressed into forced labour in Chinese cotton fields, which are a major supplier to the Western textiles industry, according to a research by Zenz published in December by the Washington-based think tank, the Center for Global Policy. Zenz said his research was based on Chinese official documents available online.

“Anybody who cares or who claims to have anything ethical in their business and supply chains has to divest,” Zenz said in December, referring to the textile industry’s sourcing of Xinjiang cotton. Xinjiang produces a third of China’s cotton.  

Zenz also published a report last week based on previously untranslated documents in Chinese including the so-called Nankai Report, written in 2019 by three academics at Nankai University’s China Institute of Wealth and Economics, including the institute’s dean. 

The Nankai Report is unprecedented in its details, according to Zenz, and implicitly reveals the impact of state coercion from the Nankai researchers’ own field work and surveys. The report talks about security guards accompanying the Uighur labourers, the labour recruitment quota set by the government, and other details in one document.

“The authors’ access to government information and relevant sites was privileged, far exceeding that which could be expected by regular academics,” Zenz noted. Zenz said his assessment on forced labour was supplemented by other reports from Chinese academics and former senior government officials.

The Office of the United States Trade Representative on 1 March said US President Joe Biden’s administration had made it a top priority to address the abuses of China’s forced labour programme targeting Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. 

The previous US administration of former president Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Chinese companies acquiring US technology, saying they were complicit in human rights violations against Uighurs in Xinjiang. Other sanctions were imposed on Chinese government officials and a major government department in Xinjiang. 

Chinese government supports legal action

In a 9 March press conference, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, indicated that the government supported the private legal action against Zenz. 

“Many companies and residents in Xinjiang suffered heavy economic losses after Zenz’s rumour of ‘forced labour’ came out of nowhere,” Zhao said, describing Zenz’s reports as “malicious smearing tactics”. China’s official media have frequently sought to discredit Zenz as a Christian “religious extremist” and “pseudo-researcher”.

“Their decision to seek legal redress against Zenz reflects a stronger awareness among the Chinese citizens to safeguard their rights through the law. We support this,” Zhao added. 

Zenz has said it “seems that the lawsuit threat is part of a well-prepared propaganda offensive”. 

He told the Washington Post newspaper this week: “It is the first admission that they really are suffering major economic losses” in China, adding that the lawsuit against him in China shows that US sanctions are beginning to bite.

Jurisdiction and arbitrary detention

Donald Clarke, a law professor specialising in Chinese law at the George Washington University Law School in the US, said in a blog post that jurisdiction for the lawsuit would first have to be established for any case involving Zenz, a foreigner living outside China with no connection to China. 

Since the lawsuit reportedly seeks damages, arguably it could only apply to Zenz’s assets in China, and he has none. But Clarke also raised important issues of arbitrary detention which could affect other academics. 

“People with their assets in the US do not, I think, need to be seriously concerned about this kind of lawsuit. They do, of course, need to be concerned about going to China, because they can be prevented from leaving the country until they pay off the judgment. But if they have already drawn the attention of the Chinese authorities to this extent, they shouldn’t be going in the first place, regardless of whether someone has sued them.

“Moreover, at least in this kind of case they’ll know they’re a target. You can be kept from leaving the country even before a judgment issues against you, merely because you have been sued. You might not even have received notice; the first time you find out is when you show up at the airport and can’t get on your plane.”

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post-nl.php?story=20210310133012408

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Veteran Canadian Olympic officials dismiss ‘silly’ calls to move 2022 Games from China

2021/02/22 2 Comments

Not a “silly” call but an unrealistic one, and thus more virtue signalling than effective. Only realistic option is a boycott with as many countries involved as possible:

A number of Canadian politicians have called for the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, China, to be relocated to another country, but Dick Pound, a Canadian member of the International Olympic Committee, says such a move is unfeasible at this late date.

“What the politicians are doing with this kind of a request of moving the Games with less than a year to go is silly,” said Pound, a former president of the Canadian Olympic Committee. “If they give this 30 seconds of thought, they know it’s not possible.”

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole and other politicians, including Green Party Leader Annamie Paul and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, have called for the relocation of the Games, pointing to the Chinese government’s treatment of its Muslim minority population.

Source: Veteran Canadian Olympic officials dismiss ‘silly’ calls to move 2022 Games from China

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Human rights adviser presses Trudeau to call out China’s actions in Xinjiang as genocide

2021/02/20 Leave a comment

Right call:

Irwin Cotler, a former Liberal justice minister and a leading voice on human rights, is urging Justin Trudeau to take steps to recognize that China is conducting acts of genocide against its Muslim minority.

Mr. Cotler said the federal government could either ask the Supreme Court of Canada to rule on whether China is committing genocide or have Parliament adopt a resolution on the issue.

MPs are preparing to vote Monday on a Conservative motion to recognize China’s conduct as genocide. The NDP, Bloc Québécois and Green Party have indicated that they would support the motion, which says Beijing’s actions contravene the UN Genocide Convention.

The Prime Minister, who said this week that he was reluctant to describe China’s conduct as genocide and that the matter required more study, recently appointed Mr. Cotler as his special adviser for Holocaust remembrance and combatting anti-Semitism.

The Montreal lawyer said he’s confident that what is taking place in China meets the test of genocide.

“I have looked at all the evidence and I have no doubt that, in fact, there are mass atrocities that are constitutive to acts of genocide under the Genocide Convention,” Mr. Cotler said in an interview.

The Biden and Trump administrations have both said Beijing’s treatment of Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang region meet a credible definition of “genocide.” Allegations include mass incarceration, destruction of religious sites, forced labour, forced sterilization and other forms of population control, as well as torture.

Mr. Cotler said forced sterilizations and abortions and holding more than one million Uyghurs in what he called “concentration camps” violate the Convention.

“This constitutes the largest detention of a minority since the Holocaust … and you have witnesses testifying about forced enslavement, torture, mass rape, disappearances, murder,” he said.

A growing body of evidence from human-rights monitors, Western media outlets and testimony from Uyghur survivors themselves has documented China’s actions.

Media reports have detailed how China has forced intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands in Xinjiang. Birth rates in Hotan and Kashgar, Uyghur-majority areas of Xinjiang, fell more than 60 per cent between 2015 and 2018, an Associated Press report says.

Beijing defends its conduct by saying that it’s trying to stamp out extremism and calls the camps re-education centres.

The Conservative motion would not be the first statement from Parliament on the issue. In October, a House of Commons subcommittee, dominated by Liberal MPs, also labelled Beijing’s conduct in Xinjiang as genocide.

Arif Virani, the parliamentary secretary to Justice Minister and Attorney-General David Lametti, later told the Commons that he believed “it is genocide that appears to be taking place today in China.”

The federal government has previously said it wants an independent investigation into China’s treatment of the Uyghurs. And Mr. Trudeau said earlier this week that Canada would like to be part of such an investigation. Human-rights advocates have pointed out that it’s extremely unlikely China would ever allow it.

When asked if he is reluctant to describe China’s conduct as genocide in case it leads to repercussions for jailed Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, Mr. Trudeau said Monday that his primary concern is making sure the term genocide is not misused.

“There is no question there have been tremendous human-rights abuses reported coming out of Xinjiang, and we are extremely concerned about that.”

But he said that when it comes to calling it genocide, “we need to ensure all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed in the process before a determination like that is made.”

Mr. Cotler said he knows the Prime Minister is worried about the fate of the two Michaels but added that a parliamentary determination of genocide would allow “the government to say they are responding to the will of Parliament, which is reflective and representative of the will of the people … or they can go the Supreme Court route.”

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Green Party Leader Annamie Paul have said they believe Beijing is committing genocide against the Uyghurs. Ms. Paul has urged Ottawa to consider diplomatic and economic sanctions against China.

The Conservatives have said that other consequences should follow a recognition of genocide, and they have already urged the government to press Olympic organizers to move the 2022 Winter Games out of Beijing. The Conservative motion to be voted on Monday was amended during debate Thursday to also urge the relocation of the Games from Beijing.

Paul Evans, the HSBC Chair in Asian Research at the University of British Columbia, said Canada is “not on strong moral and political ground” to lead on the issue of genocide, given this country’s painful history of residential schools for Indigenous children.

“There do appear to be parallels between our residential-school history and what Beijing is attempting to do with some of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang,” he said.

“We would be on a firmer ground, and more likely to attract others to the cause, if we labelled Chinese actions in Xinjiang as ‘cultural genocide,’ a horror we are very familiar with in our own story.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trudeaus-holocaust-adviser-says-canada-must-recognize-chinas-actions/

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Canada, dozens of allies, declare arbitrary detentions immoral amid Kovrig, Spavor

2021/02/16 Leave a comment

Helpful coalition building even if impact may be limited:

Canada and has created a coalition with 57 other countries to support a new international declaration denouncing state-sponsored arbitrary detention of foreign nationals for political purposes.

The new declaration was born out of a year of behind-the-scenes international diplomacy, spearheaded by former foreign affairs minister Francois-Philippe Champagne.

Canada has sought global support to free Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who are spending their 798th day in Chinese prisons today.

“I was inspired by what I was seeing as the plight of all those which have been arbitrarily detained in the world and a desire to do something tangible,” Champagne said in an interview. “It reminded me of a quote from Mandela: it always seems impossible until it’s done.”

While ending Kovrig’s and Spavor’s Chinese imprisonment remains Canada’s top priority, the new declaration is meant to be a broad denunciation to end the coercive practice in other numerous countries, such as Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

“It is fine for two countries to have differences of opinion. But it is totally unacceptable if citizens from our country go to another country either to visit or to work there, that they have to live in fear that they could become a bargaining chip,” Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau said in an interview.

Garneau wouldn’t name specific countries, saying the new declaration is “country-agnostic.” He said he wants to recruit more countries as signatories with the goal of ending the practice everywhere and to discourage other countries from taking it up.

“It’s fine to have diplomatic relations. And it’s fine to have differences of opinion. But it’s not acceptable. It’s illegal. It doesn’t respect human rights. It’s unacceptable to practice arbitrary detention when we feel that things aren’t going our way,” said Garneau.

Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat working for the non-governmental International Crisis Group, and Spavor, an entrepreneur specializing in exchanges with North Korea, were rounded up by Chinese authorities nine days after the RCMP arrested Chinese high-tech scion Meng Wanzhou at the Vancouver airport in December 2018.

The Mounties were acting on a U.S. extradition warrant that alleged she had committed bank fraud to violate sanctions on Iran.

Canada and its allies view the subsequent national-security charges China laid against Kovrig and Spavor to be bogus. They have denounced the detentions as arbitrary and called for the two to be released — exhortations that have fallen on angry and deaf ears in Beijing.

Canada and its major allies in the G7, the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, and countries on every continent support the new declaration, which is non-binding but aims to shame countries that engage in targeted detentions of foreign nationals to achieve a political end.

The new declaration — called the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations — has no actual enforcement provisions. Instead, it aims to stigmatize arbitrary detention in the same vein as the Ottawa Treaty to ban anti-personnel mines.

“It is something that is intended to put pressure on countries that do practise arbitrary detention,” said Garneau, saying it is “very similar to when Canada decided back in the days of Lloyd Axworthy,” Canada’s then foreign minister, to spearhead the landmine treaty.

Champagne said the declaration was also modelled after NATO’s Article 5, which declares that an attack on one of its members constitutes an attack on all 30 member countries.

“The concept behind that is that if you were to take one of our citizens, we will, on a voluntary basis, come together to make sure that these issues do not remain bilateral.”

Champagne, now the industry minister, will join Garneau and foreign ministers from dozens of countries for a three-hour teleconference this morning to launch the new initiative and discuss its implications.

The proceedings are to hear statements from more than 40 foreign ministers; lawyer Amal Clooney, the international human rights activist who has represented imprisoned journalists and other victims of arbitrary political detention; and Kenneth Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch.

Champagne said the concept had its roots in discussions with British officials and won support among the countries in the Five Eyes, G7 and European Union and across the world.

“You start with a few countries, you go to seven, then 10, then 15, then 20, then 25. Then 30,” he said. “My benchmark was 50.”

China became incensed as Canada built the coalition of countries to speak out on behalf of Kovrig and Spavor. China warned Canada of negative consequences if it continued to do that.

Asked whether the declaration was intended as a message to China, Champagne said: “My message is to all those which have been arbitrarily detained in the world: That your liberty has been stolen, but your voice won’t be silenced … We stand by you, and we will fight for you at every step of the way.”

Source: Canada, dozens of allies, declare arbitrary detentions immoral amid Kovrig, Spavor

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China’s Crackdown on Muslims Extends to a Resort Island

2021/02/16 Leave a comment

Relentless pressures and crackdowns…

The call to prayer still echoes through the alleys of Sanya’s nearly 1,000-year-old Muslim neighborhood, where crescent-topped minarets rise above the rooftops. The government’s crackdown on the tiny, deeply pious community in this southern Chinese city has been subtle.

Signs on shops and homes that read “Allahu akbar” — “God is greatest” in Arabic — have been covered with foot-wide stickers promoting the “China Dream,” a nationalistic official slogan. The Chinese characters for halal, meaning permissible under Islam, have been removed from restaurant signs and menus. The authorities have closed two Islamic schools and have twice tried to bar female students from wearing head scarves.

The Utsuls, a community of no more than 10,000 Muslims in Sanya, are among the latest to emerge as targets of the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign against foreign influence and religions. Their troubles show how Beijing is working to erode the religious identity of even its smallest Muslim minorities, in a push for a unified Chinese culture with the Han ethnic majority at its core.

The new restrictions in Sanya, a city on the resort island of Hainan, mark a reversal in government policy. Until several years ago, officials supported the Utsuls’ Islamic identity and their ties with Muslim countries, according to local religious leaders and residents, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid government retaliation.

The party has said its restrictions on Islam and Muslim communities are aimed at curbing violent religious extremism. It has used that rationale to justify a clampdown on Muslims in China’s far western region of Xinjiang, following a series of attacksseven years ago. But Sanya has seen little unrest.

The tightening of control over the Utsuls “reveals the real face of the Chinese Communist campaign against local communities,” said Ma Haiyun, an associate professor at Frostburg State University in Maryland who studies Islam in China. “This is about trying to strengthen state control. It’s purely anti-Islam.”

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied that it opposes Islam. But under Xi Jinping, its top leader, the party has torn down mosques, ancient shrines and Islamic domes and minarets in northwestern and central China. Its crackdown has focused heavily on the Uighurs, a Central Asian Muslim minority of 11 million in Xinjiang, many of whom have been held in mass detention camps and forced to renounce Islam.

The effort to “sinicize Islam” accelerated in 2018 after the State Council, China’s cabinet, issued a confidential directive ordering officials to prevent the faith from interfering with secular life and the state’s functions. The directive warned against “Arabization” and the influence of Saudi Arabia, or “Saudi-ization,” in mosques and schools.

In Sanya, the party is going after a group with a significant position in China’s relations with the Islamic world. The Utsuls have played host to Muslims from around the country seeking the balmy climes of Hainan Province, and they have served as a bridge to Muslim communities in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

The Utsuls’ Islamic identity was celebrated for years by the government as China pushed for stronger links with the Arab world. Such links have been key to Mr. Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, a program to finance infrastructure projects across the world and increase Beijing’s political sway in the process.

The Utsuls have become “an important base for Muslims who have moved abroad to find their roots and investigate their ancestors,” said a government notice in 2017 hailing the role of Islam in Hainan in the Belt and Road plan. “To date, they have received thousands of scholars and friends from more than a dozen countries and regions, and are an important window for cultural exchanges among peoples around the South China Sea.”

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ICYMI: Hong Kong to teach elementary students about subversion and foreign interference

2021/02/10 Leave a comment

Yet another sign of the Chinese regime’s crackdown on Hong Kong:

Hong Kong has unveiled controversial guidelines for schools that include teaching students as young as six about colluding with foreign forces and subversion, as part of a new national security curriculum.

Beijing imposed a security law on Hong Kong in June 2020 in response to months of often violent anti-government and anti-China protests in 2019 that put the global financial hub more firmly on an authoritarian path.

The Education Bureau’s guidelines, released late on Thursday, show that Beijing’s plans for the semi-autonomous Hong Kong go beyond quashing dissent, and aim for a societal overhaul to bring its most restive city more in line with the Communist Party-ruled mainland.

Source: Hong Kong to teach elementary students about subversion and foreign interference

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