Update: Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, despite having an extra 12 hours to reply, did not reply to The Canada Files’ request for comment.

Written by: Aidan Jonah

The Canada Files has found that a group created with CIA money is managing funds for Uygur dissident immigrants which Canada will bring in under Motion 62, tasked by the Canadian government, while simultaneously pretending to be an oppositional force to Canada’s Liberal government.

Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project (URAP) is the leading oppositionist to any pretension of potential for positive Canada-China relations, which the Liberals seek to portray to the public, if only China would ‘respect’ the ‘rules-based order’.

This author previously explained URAP’s CIA connections:

“URAP has a blunt message, funded by the CIA-front National Endowment for Democracy to the point where they can have four staffers, of falsely claiming that China is committing genocide against Uygurs in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. URAP founder Mehmet Tohti had already had connections with this CIA-front as early as 2004, when he was a co-founder of the World Uyghur Congress, who’d serve two terms as Vice-President; WUC is perennially funded by the NED.

After being founded in 2020 thanks to NED money, URAP set out to have Canada’s parliament declare that China was committing genocide against Uygurs. URAP succeeded on February 22, 2021, as Canadian parliament voted to claim China was committing genocide on Uygurs. Just eight days before that, URAP was able to exclusively announce the creation of an official Canada-Uyghur Parliamentary Friendship Group to replace the unofficial one, just eight days before.”

And remarkably, in a May 2023 memorandum, URAP verified stories The Canada Files initially broke, and even confirmed their central role in getting Canadian government commitment to bring in 10,000 anti-China Uygur dissidents to Canada:

“Successes include: the building of a Uyghur parliamentary friendship group; Canada’s recent commitment to welcome 10,000 Uyghur refugees; and the hearing conducted by the Subcommittee on International Human Rights in 2020 and the subsequent parliamentary motion recognizing the Uyghur genocide.”

URAP’s memorandum declared their efforts to have a replica of the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act (UFLPA) implemented in Canada, and told an unnamed department of the US government that “URAP would greatly benefit from the United States’ assistance in these efforts.” Their desired help was for “the United States officials” to “raise this issue in bilateral discussions with their Canadian counterparts”, “among other things”.

URAP and its Executive Director Mehmet Tohti has been a major player in a foreign interference inquiry which is still ongoing, and has heavily focused on smearing China: Tohti withdrew URAP from a coalition funded by Canada’s government to participate in the inquiry, and was able to be the individual who, alongside pressure from the coalition and an anti-China ‘concern group’ cost an independent MP and ex-Ontario Liberal MPP their ability to ask questions of witnesses, something which they were supposed to have after obtaining full Intervenor Standing. And once he got his way with the inquiry, Tohti’s URAP was allowed to rejoin ‘The Human Rights Coalition’ on August 30, 2024.

Two key actors in this coalition have united again for another anti-China initiative. URAP and The Human Rights Action Group, run by a vocal ‘China organ harvesting’ conspiracy theorist, ex-MP David Matas. This month, they are calling for Canada to impose sanctions on eight Chinese companies which own squid fishing vessels, using a report from ‘The Outlaw Ocean Project’ which alleges that these vessels use Chinese Uygur and DPRK ‘slave labour’ and engage in systemic abuses. While large corporate fishing vessels have a history of systemic abuses, the clear propaganda element is the unproven ‘slave labour’ claims.

Back in May, URAP and HRAG were joined by the mysterious Center for Advanced Defense Studies, which brags in its 2023 Annual Report that “we are classified by U.S. Government standards as a low-risk guarantee”, in pressuring Canada’s government to implement “targeted sanctions against four China-based surveillance companies”: Hikvision, Dahua, Tiandy and Uniview. They sent a 345-page report claiming that these companies enable ‘abuse’ of Uygur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region to the Sanctions Bureau at Global Affairs Canada, then met with staff from the Privy Council Office, and then passed over the report to the news outlet, ‘The Logic’, for a story that would put more pressure on Canada’s government.

In the same month URAP co-sent the aforementioned report to Canada’s government, they got a premium grant from Canada’s government. What makes the grant premium is not the amount, but instead what it’s for.

URAP received $982k CAD to “provide direct financial support and fund the provision of immediate and essential services to eligible recipients as listed in Ts & Cs [Uygur Muslim dissidents]”, beginning on May 8, 2024. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada expects that “Resettlement assistance is timely, accessible, useful and client-focused”.

The Canadian government-imperial diaspora faction-think tank-NGO nexus is here and growing quickly. And it’s already having a crucial impact on Canadian domestic politics, which Uygur separatist organizations are seeking to escalate.

Look no further than a July 3-6, 2023, legal summit held between three organizations whose foundings and much funding come at the behest of a CIA-front, the National Endowment for Democracy: Uyghur Human Rights Project, URAP and World Uyghur Congress. Topic three focused on, among other things “domestic action through civil lawsuits”. URAP wanted the summit to “produce a substantive and robust legal framework for the coming years of advocacy for Uyghurs.”

Through their funding to URAP, Canada’s government is further escalating its backing of the imperialist factions of the Chinese diaspora, and elevating URAP to the official middle-manager of the Uygur dissidents in Canada, a Ukrainian Canadian Congress-esque role.

This is part and parcel of what The Canada Files explained in September 2023, after Canada’s parliament honoured Ukrainian Nazi Jaroslav Hunka, who got into Canada after WWII: that the Canadian government has, since WWII’s end, imported in large numbers various anti-communist and generally reactionary diaspora factions to ensure the stability of domestic support for its internal colonialism and international imperialism. What’s changed is a return to how brazen the importation’s purpose is, and how brazen the government is in declaring this by having a Uygur separatist organization manage funds for Uygur dissident immigrants that the Canadian government will import by the end of 2025.

The Canadian left is doing nothing to stop it, ensuring it will only face a rougher road in the future and pro-engagement Chinese Canadians will face more repression, the longer the left waits to fight against the Canadian government’s anti-China policies. Is there any red-line for Canada’s left on Canada-China policy? Who knows.

Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.

Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.

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