On prosecuting genocide, will Canada fail the Uyghurs as it has failed the Rohingya since 2017?

By Fareed Khan 

On February 22nd Canadian Members of Parliament voted 266 to zero in favour of a motion to designate the crimes being committed by the Chinese government against its Uyghur Muslim minority as genocide.  Unfortunately, 72 MPs (mostly Liberal), including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his entire cabinet, chose to abstain from voting on the motion.

On March 8th the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington D.C. and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights issued a comprehensive report which examined the Uyghur genocide and China’s breaches of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.  The report supports a finding that China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs in breach of each and every action which defines genocide under the Convention.

The report was authored by 24 prominent and respected human rights and genocide scholars.  Included among them were former Canadian cabinet ministers Lloyd Axworthy and Irwin Cotler, former Canadian ambassadors to the United Nations Yves Fortier and Alan Rock.

Despite the release of this report and its findings the prime minister and his cabinet have made no public statements about the Canadian government taking action on the Uyghur genocide motion in light of the damning evidence presented in the report about China’s multiple genocidal crimes.

Under the Genocide Convention any one of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group is classified as genocide:

(a)   Killing members of the group;

(b)   Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c)   Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical  destruction in whole or in part;

(d)   Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e)   Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The last time Parliament voted on a genocide motion was in September 2018 when both the House of Commons and the Senate decided in two unanimously supported motions that the atrocities committed by Myanmar against its Rohingya minority was genocide under the Genocide Convention.  The motions came a year after atrocities against the Rohingya were instigated by Myanmar, and the House of Commons motion was supported by the prime minister and his cabinet.

However, if the Trudeau government’s lack of subsequent action in response to those two motions is an indication of the government’s efforts at follow through, then Canada will very likely fail to live up to its international legal obligations in response to Parliament’s Uyghur genocide declaration.

Since the two 2018 motions MPs and Senators, along with Canadian human rights organizations, have called on the Canadian government to file a case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on multiple occasions.  These calls for action were repeatedly ignored.

When the West African nation of Gambia filed a genocide case against Myanmar at the ICJ in November 2019, there were calls by Parliamentarians and human rights activists for Canada to join the case.  But those calls were also ignored by the Trudeau government.

Overwhelming evidence in the form of media reports, satellite photos, and eyewitness testimonies has shown that China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs.  This evidence justifies Parliament’s declaration, and it puts to shame the decision by the prime minister’s and cabinet to abstain.

Some of the crimes that China is alleged to have committed include:

●       imprisoning more than a million Uyghurs in concentration camps;

●       abducting Uyghur children from their parents and putting them in state run indoctrination camps to strip them of their faith, language and culture;

●       forcibly sterilizing Uyghur women, and forced abortions of pregnant Uyghur women;

●       the systematic rape of Uyghur women by concentration camp personnel;

●       the use of Uyghur slave labour to produce goods for export;

●       summary executions of Uyghur prisoners in order to harvest their organs;

●       the destruction of thousands of mosques, including some dating back many centuries; and

●       the bulldozing of hundreds of Muslim cemeteries.

On January 27th – International Holocaust Remembrance Day – Justin Trudeau put out a statement about preventing the sorts of crimes that resulted in the death of 17 million people in Nazi concentration camps.  He intoned the mantra "never again" as he has done every year on that date since becoming Prime Minister.

However, "never again" is a meaningless slogan when uttered by the prime minister if he and his government fail to recognize the Uyghur genocide, and fail to take action to prevent further genocidal crimes.  The decision to abstain on the vote by Trudeau and his ministers insults the memory of Nazi genocide victims, and repeats Canada’s failure to act on Canada’s last genocide motion relating to Rohingya Muslims.

If the Trudeau government is not willing to recognize the worst crime imaginable under human law, when overwhelming evidence shows it is occurring, then Canadians need to question the government’s moral commitment to defending human rights, and Trudeau’s often repeated claims that his government is a defender of the international rule of law.

If there was ever a case where the term genocide needed to be applied and action taken to prevent further genocidal crimes, it is in the case of the Uyghurs.  One can only hope that Canadians see the need to take action and pressure the Trudeau government to act so that Canada doesn’t fail the Uyghurs as it has failed the Rohingya.

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