The Canadian parliament says China committed genocide against Muslim minorities

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Although Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet abstained from Monday’s vote, a majority of lawmakers (including many Liberals who participated) voted in favor of the motion tabled by the opposition Conservative party.

The motion, which acknowledges “that the People’s Republic of China is currently carrying out genocide against Uighurs and other Turkish Muslims,” ​​also calls on the International Olympic Committee to move the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing.

Canadian Foreign Minister Marc Garneau was the only cabinet minister to attend the vote in parliament and officially abstained “on behalf of the Government of Canada.”

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Opposition leader Erin O’Toole, who led the effort in the parliamentary vote, called on the Trudeau government to support the determination, which while symbolic will not become government policy. “It’s a shame that Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government continue to refuse to tell the horrible behavior of the Chinese Communist Party what it is: a genocide,” O’Toole said Monday.

Parliamentary voting also makes Canada the first country to semi-officially support requests for Beijing’s withdrawal from the 2022 Winter Olympics over allegations of human rights abuses. More than 100 human rights organizations have joined together to defend the political boycott of the upcoming Games, which will be held in February next year.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Canada should stop politicizing the 2022 Beijing Games and said it was undermining “the interests of the international Olympic movement and of athletes from all countries “.

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The motion was approved just over a month after the U.S. government made the same determination, with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announcing that the world was attending “the ‘systematic attempt to destroy the Uighurs by the Chinese party-state’.

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied allegations of human rights abuses against Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang said Tuesday that China “strongly condemns and strongly opposes the Canadian Parliament’s motion,” adding that they had made representations in Ottawa.

“The facts show that there has never been any genocide in Xinjiang,” he said.

In a statement released after Monday’s vote, Canadian Foreign Minister Garneau said the Trudeau government believes the allegations against China should be investigated by international experts.

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“The Government of Canada takes allegations of genocide extremely seriously. We have a responsibility to work with other members of the international community to ensure that these allegations are investigated by an independent international body of legal experts,” Garneau said in a statement. published on Monday, adding that an “international and independent body” should launch a “credible investigation”.

Garneau’s statement came on the same day that British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab called on China to give the United Nations “urgent and unrestricted” access to Xinjiang so that the allegations could be investigated independently. of human rights abuses.

“The situation in Xinjiang is beyond the obvious. Reported abuses, which include torture, forced labor and forced sterilization of women, are extreme and widespread,” Raab said during a speech to the UN Human Rights Council. in Geneva.

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