Ottawa’s reaction to a new Chinese law on ethnic unity is tepid and does not live up to Canada’s promise to stop foreign governments from threatening diaspora abroad, a Uyghur rights activist said.
The law, which Beijing enacted in early July, gives a legal basis for the Chinese government to prosecute people or organizations outside China if their actions are deemed to harm the progress of “ethnic unity.”
“It is a textbook example of transnational oppression,” said Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project.
“Our reaction to China is fading away, day by day, week by week. And then we don’t hear too much about transnational repression or gross violations of human rights.”
China says the law promotes harmony among the country’s 55 ethnic groups, who make up just under nine per cent of the country’s 1.4 billion population. The law mandates the use of Mandarin Chinese as the primary language in education.
The law says all Chinese citizens have a duty to “forge a common consciousness of the Chinese nation according to law and the constitution.”
It may impact minorities like Tibetans and Uyghurs, who have protested Beijing policies in the past, including through violent means.
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Canada’s ambassador to United Nations agencies in Geneva, Peter MacDougall, listed the law along a series of issues that Ottawa is watching, in a June 16 statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council, responding to an annual report on human rights worldwide.
“We are also concerned about the ethnic unity law in China, and call for respect of the human rights of minorities,” he said, while also touching on unrelated issues in Afghanistan, Iran and Ukraine.
Tohti said he’s stunned Ottawa had nothing to say about the risks of the law being used to persecute people in Canada and elsewhere.
“It is a vague and very weak statement,” Tohti said. “The nature of Chinese transnational repression, that dimension is almost ignored. And that should be the key focus for Canada.”
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Tohti said there is particularly a risk of China issuing arrest warrants that could see people arrested if they travel to countries with extradition treaties with China such as South Korea. Already, Hong Kong’s sweeping national security law has been used to issue bounties for activists abroad, including in Canada.
He said Ottawa should mount a global effort to protect Chinese dissidents from the law, but he fears the government has given up on publicly raising human rights issues ever since Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to Beijing in January.
Tohti noted the Carney government made transnational repression a priority when it hosted the G7 summit last year.
“We should be playing a leadership role. Now we almost drop all of this important leverage from our agenda, and so we are talking softly now. We don’t talk too much about China’s human rights,” he said.
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Deputy Conservative Leader Melissa Lantsman called the law “oppression with a legal stamp” by the Chinese Communist Party.
“Beijing’s new ‘ethnic unity law’ is just the latest tool in the CCP’s playbook of control, from crushing minority rights at home to menacing Taiwan abroad. Authoritarianism doesn’t stop at borders with this,” she wrote on the platform X.
The European Union and the U.S. State Department have said they will not allow the new Chinese law to be applied within their territories. Canada has not explicitly said that.
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We’re not really in the market for making new enemies right now, unfortunately.
Genocide is a-okay
Signed Canada
Almost half of the Canadian population isn’t even ready to reconcile our own ongoing genocide…
A really ironic take given that you’re justifying genocide in your own thread.
What is happening in Xinjiang is not genocide.
It is odd for them to appeal to us of all people.
What IS the right way to unify 1,400,000,000 people into a cohesive, functional society where the rights of the individual do not detract from the greater good?
Not impart on their language or culture/tradition. Even religion is allowed in people’s own homes/temples.
And if those traditions aren’t kept within their homes and places of worship?
What happens when beliefs become radicalized and inspire violence against other ethnic groups? Or disruption of public order or the freedoms of others?
Any belief can be radicalized including chinese government belief. China is already united with it’s diversity. Rhis law will have the opposite effect just like here in Quebec province, our leaders reject multiculturalism and is implementing an extreme version of secularism that restrict people fundamental rights and expulse people who do not abide
So none then?
Where did i mention the word murder?
Hundreds of Han Chinese have been killed and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of infrastructure and private property have been destroyed by religious extremists in Xinjiang. At the radical end, the beliefs of an element of that society are incompatible with the stable, secular humanist
You can believe whatever you want, but once your beliefs motivate, and allow you to morally justify, the murder of your neighbors, you have broken the social contract of peaceful society and are no longer entitled to its protections.
Honestly, I think the tactic of isolation, re-education, and rehabilitation is REMARKABLY reserved and humane given the already unacceptable loss of human life.
Keep in mind that while the Uhygurs today represent an ethnic minority in the region, that is only after a centuries long history of organized military oppression and violence against the Han Chinese at their hands.
How many Quebecois have been killed by anglophones opposing Bill 101?
Punish the act not the belief.
How do you prevent those who hold the beliefs from insulating their children from alternate perspectives? How do you prevent the negativity from festering and growing? How do you break the cycle?
This isn’t a uniquely Chinese question. In fact, take China out of the equation, how do we prevent the spread of white Christian nationalism in North America?
Uplifting societies vulnerable.
A secular education helps. Food/social programmes also help.
Violence is for the capitalists, you must appeal to the consesinous of the workers.
And if they won’t participate in that secular education consensually? Our public education system has become consistently more inclusive and progressive decade by decade, so in responses, christian fundamentalists are trying to dismantle it and/or homeschooling their children in record numbers.
What are they going to complain about if their standard of living is increased?
Give students breakfast and lunch, if they stay late then have a dinner for them.
You’ll find a lot more people supporting it.
However that’s just one example. Of course you can look at residential schools as a legitimate reason people might be hesitant.
If we actually funded healthcare then people wouldn’t think private is better.
Public outreach, host events that people can go to and reach them there.
You don’t need to convince everyone, just make progress.
We have enough animosity at the moment dealing with the United States of Assholes… let’s hold off on antagonizing China for bit.
