OTTAWA -- Speaking with world leaders on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reinforced the government’s condemnation of accounts of human rights violations in China’s Xinjiang province after China announced sanctions against Canadian parliamentarians over the weekend.
Trudeau said Canada has been "strong" in its defence of human rights and continues to work in a "coordinated" manner with international allies in holding China accountable for the treatment of the minority Muslim population in the region.
"Our concerns about what’s going on there are significant and need to be responded to by the Chinese government," he said.
Days after Canada’s decision to join the U.S., EU, and U.K. in levying sanctions against Chinese state officials, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a news release it has banned Conservative MP Michael Chong from entering the country and prohibited any Chinese citizen from doing business with him. The sanctions, announced Saturday, also targeted the federal subcommittee on which Chong sits, which is studying the situation of the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in China's Xinjiang region.
There have long been reports gathered by journalists and international human rights advocates exposing instances of state surveillance, mass rape, forced labour, sterilization, and torture at China’s "re-education" camps for Uyghurs.
In a tweet posted over the weekend, China’s consul general to Rio de Janeiro Li Yang called Trudeau a "boy," stating "your greatest achievement is to have ruined the friendly relations between China and Canada, and have turned Canada into a running dog of the US. Spendthrift!!!" with an accompanying photo of the prime minister.
On Monday, Trudeau said he also welcomes news that China is negotiating the terms of a visit by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to the Xinjiang, which UN Secretary General António Guterres added is still being ironed out.
"We are seriously engaging with the Chinese government in order to be able to have the mission of the Human Rights High Commissioner and to make sure that mission has no inacceptable limitations. So I hope that these negotiations will be concluded positively," said Guterres.
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian's told reporters on Monday that Xinjiang’s door is "always open," but that the purpose of the visit is to "promote exchanges and cooperation between the two sides, rather than to conduct the so-called ‘investigation’ based on presumption of guilt," he said.
In an interview on CTV News Channel’s Power Play with Evan Solomon on Monday, Chong said the sanctions levied against him are "confirmation" his efforts to bring to light China’s "gross violations of human rights and international law" were effective.
In late February Chong led the Conservative-backed motion to have Parliament formally label China’s treatment of the Uyghurs a genocide. Almost all MPs – including the majority of Liberal MPs who participated – voted in favor of the motion, while Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau abstained and the rest of cabinet was absent.
Chong said it’s not a coincidence China didn’t choose to sanction Trudeau’s front bench.
"It’s interesting to note that China didn’t sanction the Liberal government, it didn’t sanction Liberal cabinet ministers, and I think the reason for that is they got a pass because they abstained from the vote," he said.
"I think the government needs to do much more to hold China accountable for these violations of international law."
He said that includes excluding Huawei from Canada’s 5G rollout, banning cotton imports from China, and suspending payments to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
With a file from The Canadian Press.
