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Written by: Aidan Jonah

On October 21, 2020, the Canadian parliament’s Subcommittee on International Human Rights declared its belief that China was committing a genocide against the Uighur population in Xinjiang.

Four months later, the Conservative Party revealed that it would use Opposition Day, on February 22, 2021, in the Canadian parliament to force a key vote. This vote would be on a non-binding motion urging the Canadian government to declare that China is committing a genocide against Uighurs in Xinjiang.

This came despite extensive reporting by the Grayzone, exposing how CIA cut-outs and NED funded organizations were the main drivers of these allegations. They further showcased how the allegations of genocide against the Uighur population are totally false, and motivated by the American desire to smear China.

So who did this house subcommittee accept as witnesses or exports, and which institutional and news reports did it cite in its decision?

House Subcommittee prioritizes regime change advocates over all else

From 2015 to 2019, Liberal MP Anita Vandenbeld served as the chair of the SIHR, with Conservative MP David Sweet and NDP MP Cheryl Hardcastle serving as vice-chairs. From the 2019 election onwards, Liberal MP Peter Fonseca has served as the chair of the SIHR, with Conservative MP David Sweet and Bloc Quebecois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe serving as vice-chairs. NDP MP Heather McPherson is a member of the current subcommittee.

It is immediately noteworthy that the committee chose to not invite any of the two Grayzone contributors who worked on the exposes, Max Blumenthal and Ajit Singh, which provided the basis for debunking the Uighur genocide narrative.

The first meeting of this subcommittee’s first sitting occurred on October 16, 2018. The very first witness was Evelyn Puxley, a bureaucrat in the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. Two days later, the committee had two further witnesses. The first was Adrian Zenz, a Senior Fellow in China Studies, at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, an organization which the Grayzone described as “a Washington DC-based right-wing lobbying front born out of the National Captive Nations Committee.”

The Grayzone detailed how “Zenz is a far right Christian fundamentalist who claims to have been ‘led by god’ to defeat the Communist Party of China. Journalist Dan Cohen detailed Zenz’s rampant anti Semitism, stating that he’s a “German anti-Semite who believes Jews that refuse to convert to Christianity will be ‘wiped out’ and put into a ‘fiery furnace’. His research is riddled with severe errors and miscalculations, and he has been caught on numerous occasions manipulating data to fit his anti-China agenda.

The other was Farida Deif, Canada Director for Human Rights Watch. Deif pushed the standard debunked claims about “Chinese concentration camps,” following well in the organization’s long history of advocating for murderous unilateral sanctions, demonizing China and enabling North American imperialism around the world, all while taking money from Saudi oligarchs.

On October 23, 2018, the committee was joined by Darren Byler, a lecturer at the University of Washington. In a briefing to the subcommittee, Byler repeatedly cited the discredited Zenz, along with NED funded think tank Chinese Human Rights Defenders, US government controlled propaganda outlet Radio Free Asia, and pro-regime change organization Human Rights Watch.

The final two witnesses of the first sitting, who appeared two days later, were not named, and described by the committee as “Witness-Témoin 1” and “Witness-Témoin 2”.

Second sitting marks introduction of pro-regime change forces

The second sitting of the subcommittee lasted from July 20, 2020 to August 13, 2020. The two public committee meetings, held on July 20 and August 13, lasted more than seven hours. Seven organizations testified in the first hearing.

This is where the pro-regime change organizations were invited out in force.

Mehmet Tohti is the Executive Director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project. The project proudly states that it “is funded by the Washington based National Endowment Fund for Democracy for its Advocacy work in Canada,” and says that people living in Xinjiang have been “living under Chinese occupation since 1949.” The focus of Tohti’s testimony was on pushing the debunked claim that 80 per cent of Chinese women have been sterilized. He also falsely claimed that Uighurs are having their organs harvested and sold, parroting reports which Ryan McCarthy explained “derive from front groups of far-right cult Falun Gong,” in a Grayzone article.

The NED’s work is best described by founding member Allen Weinstein, who told the Washington Post in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

Ajit Singh detailed the NED’s nefarious work in an article digging into the World Uyghur Congress:

“With millions in US taxpayer money, the NED and its subsidiaries have backed opposition parties, ‘civil society’ groups, and media organizations in countries targeted by the US for regime change.

Philip Agee, the late CIA whistleblower, described the work of the NED as a more sophisticated version of the old-fashioned covert operations that Langley used to engineer.”

Tohti was a co-founder of the NED-funded World Uyghur Congress. He was a "Special Representative” of the WUC to the European Parliament between 2010 to 2012, and even served as Vice-President of the World Uyghur Congress for two separate terms.

On February 28, 2020, during the middle of the testimony period, an unofficial Parliamentary Uyghur Friendship Group was founded, with URAP working closely with them. The group has been co-chaired ever since by Liberal MP Sameer Zuberi and Conservative MP Garrett Genuis, who have both been members of the subcommittee since the 2019 election. The group is bi-partisan and includes both senators and MPs. The executive is comprised of the two co-chairs, along with NDP MP Heather McPherson, another member of the subcommittee, Bloc Quebecois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, a vice-chair of the subcommittee, Conservative MP David Sweet, another vice-chair of the subcommittee, Elizabeth May, former Green Party leader, and Senator Mobina Jaffer. Paul Manly, the supposed anti-imperialist, is a member of this friendship group.

Five of eight MPs in the subcommittee are members of the Parliamentary Uyghur Friendship Group. Hardly impartial judges to determine whether China is committing genocide or not. Even less impartial judges towards a witness, Tohti, who was closely tied through URAP, to the same Parliamentary Uyghur Group as the majority of the subcommittee’s members, at the time when he testified. Especially so, when this testimony comes four months after the unofficial friendship group’s founding.

Note: An official Canada-Uyghur Parliamentary Friendship Group was created on February 14, 2021, replacing the unofficial one.

Additional note: Tohti now serves as the Director of the Legal Committee for fellow NED funded organization, World Uyghur Congress.

The imperialists keep coming, and they JUST KEEP COMING

A key witness in the second sitting was Elise Anderson, Senior Program Officer for Research and Advocacy of the Uyghur Human Rights Project. The UHRP is an affiliate of the US-backed World Uyghur Congress, and received $1,284,000 in grants from the National Endowment for Democracy from 2016 to 2019 alone.

A notable individual who testified is Azeezah Kanji, a legal academic and journalist, who is viewed by many as a firm anti-imperialist. So what is a figure like Kanji doing participating in an enterprise to rev up tensions with China?

It turns out that Kanji is a supporter of the aforementioned Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, which proudly states that it is an initiative funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. Kanji published an op-ed in Policy Options, co-written with URAP executive director Mehmet Tohti titled “Canada’s duty to prevent unfolding Uighur genocide.” This all comes along with her testimony at the subcommittee, advocating for sanctions and pushing the debunked allegation of genocide against Uighurs in Xinjiang.

According to an email obtained by The Canada Files, Kanji is part of a new investigative journalism project organized by Martin Lukacs, Dru Oja Jay, Moira Peters and Amy Miller. They state in the email that they have “teamed up with brilliant journalists and writers like Pam Palmater, Russ Diabo, Linda McQuaig, El Jones, Azeezah Kanji, and Avi Lewis.

The organizing quartet states that they will “be guided by the philosophy behind the Media Co-op: amplifying grassroots perspectives and speaking truths about power.”

Kanji certainly speaks to power. Speaking truth to power? Now that’s another story.

Imperialist forces make the final push in third sitting

On the day of the third and public final sitting of the subcommittee, on October 20, 2020, twelve groups and/or individuals submitted briefs, including these selected groups:

East Turkistan Government in Exile: It was founded in 2004, in the same year as the World Uyghur Congress, and is headquartered in Washington, DC. It states that “the government was established… by prominent Uyghur and other East Turkistani independence leaders from across the East Turkistani / Uyghur diaspora.” Unsurprisingly, many of these founding figures and organizations continue to be directly supported by the NED and other US-backed institutions.
- In their briefing to the subcommittee, they heavily relied of the discredited Zenz, and cited a “China Tribunal” which heavily relied on US-backed cult Falun Gong for information in their debunked report alleging organ harvesting in Canada.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute: ASPI was described by journalist Ajit Singh in a Grayzone article as “a right-wing, militaristic outfit that was founded by the Australian government in 2001 and is funded by the country’s Department of Defence.” Singh notes that “ASPI is sponsored by a host of weapons manufacturers, including Raytheon Australia, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, MBDA Missile Systems, Saab AB, Thales, and Australia.” Interestingly enough, the “Australia’s Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme — enacted by the center-right Liberal Party to monitor alleged threat of ‘Chinese political interference’ in the country, was the measure which “revealed ASPI’s extensive sources of foreign funding, including the US State Department, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), government of Japan, and NATO.”
- Australian Senator Kim Carr of the Labour Party stated that ASPI received “nearly $450,000 in funding from the US State Department for the 2019 to 2020 financial year.” Carr also raised concerns over “ASPI’s extensive funding from the US State Department’s Global Engagement Center, headed by former CIA officer and Navy fighter pilot Lea Gabrielle.”
- The institute has published multiple studies from far-right extremist researcher Adrian Zenz, and continues to parrot claims of a “Uighur genocide”.
Campaign for Uyghurs and the Uyghur Human Rights Project: Both organizations are affiliates of and directly supported by the World Uyghur Congress, a group directly funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. These organizations seek the overthrow of the Chinese government in Xinjiang, and the creation of a pro-US “East Turkistan” government. The UHRP received $1,284,000 in grants from the National Endowment for Democracy from 2016 to 2019 alone.
Canadian Labour Congress: It is certainly of concern that a major Canadian labour organization is backing the push for a war on China. In their briefing to the subcommittee, they pushed the false claim that China has refused to allow observers to enter Xinjiang, when it has in fact offered the UN, EU, numerous Muslim countries, and the United States government the opportunity to enter and observe conditions in Xinjiang. Only the UN and a few other countries, have taken up China’s offer, and disputed claims made by Western nations and think-tanks of genocide.

A day later, the subcommittee released its report to the general public. From then on, new Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has ramped up an anti-China campaign in the Canadian parliament, using the report as a basis for this push. The support for this campaign is bi-partisan, with NDP foreign policy critic Jack Harris cheering on the push to declare China’s treatment of Uighurs as a genocide. The vote on this issue is set to occur today.

The endgame is this: in hours the Canadian parliament is very likely to vote to declare China’s treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang a genocide, based on a subcommittee with a blatantly biased membership, the majority of which participates in the same organization as one of the witness who testified at hearings, based on reports from a debunked, anti-Semitic, homophobic researcher in Adrian Zenz, whose research is riddled with errors and miscalculations, and has been caught blatantly manipulating data in his reports, while failing to invite journalists who could provide a credible and evidence based alternative perspective on this issue, choosing instead to platform NED and CIA backed “experts”.

The supposed anti-imperialist heroes of the NDP and Green Party, such as Matthew Green, Niki Ashton, Leah Gazan and Alexandre Boulerice have refused to condemn the debunked Uighur genocide narrative, while Green MP Paul Manly has even openly embraced the narrative. These MPs could take a stand on this important issue, and today’s vote is a prime opportunity to do so.

Anyone in Canada who opposes imperialism should be terrified by this monumental, even if non-binding, decision especially in these extremely dubious circumstances. A decision such as this one could be a key justification for the American desire to engage in a full-scale war on China.

Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news site founded in 2019. He has written about Canadian imperialism, federal politics, and left-wing resistance to colonialism across the world. He is a second-year Bachelor of Journalism student at Ryerson University, who was the Head of Communications and Community Engagement for Etobicoke North NDP Candidate Naiima Farah in the 2019 Federal Election.

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