Canada has recognised China’s policy towards the Uyghur Muslims in its Xinjiang Province as veritably as Genocide, condemning various actions of the Xi Jinping Administration against the minority-community. In the last week of February, the House of Commons voted to declare that China was committing genocide against more than one million Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Cabinet abstained from the vote, all the members of Opposition Parties and some members of the ruling Liberal Party voted in favour of the motion. After passing the non-binding motion 266-0, the Canadian House also urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to move the 2022 Winter Olympics away from Beijing.

Interestingly, Prime Minister Trudeau was somewhat hesitant to call China’s treatment of the Uyghurs Genocide. “When it comes to the application of the very specific word Genocide, we simply need to ensure that all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed before a determination like that is made,” he stressed. Later, Marc Garneau, the Canadian Foreign Minister, made the Government’s position clear, saying that “declaring something in the Parliament is not going to adequately get results in China and that work with international allies and partners is needed”.

Meanwhile, Erin O’Toole, the Leader of the Opposition Conservative Party, claimed that main aim of the move was to send a signal to the Chinese regime that the People of Canada would never hesitate to stand up for Human Rights and Human Dignity. Earlier, the US, too, had made a similar move, with former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stating that China’s policies towards Xinjiang’s Muslims and ethnic minorities initiated crimes against humanity and genocide. His successor, Antony Blinken, backed the statement on his first day in office in January 2021.

As expected, the Asian Giant’s envoy to Ottawa advised the Canadian parliamentarians to stay out of China’s internal affairs, saying that nothing had happened in his country. The British media recently reported that China has held about a million Uyghur Muslims in camps for the past 12 months, and has been using them as labours, forcibly! Experts have opined that global diplomatic pressure has made it difficult for China to hide crimes that are being committed by it. However, Beijing would surely be reluctant to expose themselves to outside-influence, with the international community trying hard to save the Uyghurs from torture!

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das