Canadian parliament’s Tibet report sets up repeat of Xinjiang ‘genocide’ vote
Written by: Aidan Jonah
In February 2021, a non-binding Canadian parliament vote saw parliamentarians unanimously declare, bar abstentions, that there was an ongoing ‘genocide’ of Uygur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region. This vote came only four months after the Subcommittee on International Human Rights’ study on the situation in Xinjiang had concluded, with a report claiming that China was committing a ‘genocide’ there. Now a parallel situation is on the cards, with China’s Tibet Autonomous Region under the microscope.
How did the Xinjiang farce occur?
The subcommittee’s study on Xinjiang began back in October 2018, with a clear sign to how it would finish, bringing in Adrian Zenz to testify. Zenz being a Senior Fellow in China Studies, at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, who the Grayzone described as “a far right Christian fundamentalist who claims to have been ‘led by god’ to defeat the Communist Party of China.”
The subcommittee would hold two more sittings during 2020, with witnesses testifying including:
Mehmet Tohti, director of Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, which proudly states its funding from a CIA-front, the National Endowment for Democracy. Tohti was part of an unofficial Parliamentary Uyghur Friendship Group launched partway through the study (February 28, 2020), which led to the creation of an official group which multiple MPs involved in this study would join on February 14, 2021.
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.
Farida Deif, Canada Director for Human Rights Watch, a run of the mill imperialist organization which advocates for murderous unilateral sanctions, demonizes China and takes money from Saudi oligarchs.
Azeezah Kanji, ex-The Breach columnist, legal academic and journalist, who co-wrote an op-ed with URAP director Tohti.
The third sitting, held on October 20, 2020, saw briefings submitted from 12 groups and individuals including the NED-connected East Turkistan Government in Exile, the weapons manufacturer and US and UK government funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the World Uyghur Congress (NED funded organization) supported affiliates Campaign for Uyghurs and the Uyghur Human Rights Project and even the Canadian Labour Congress.
Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal and Grayzone contributor Ajit Singh, who provided the basis for debunking the Uygur genocide narrative, were never invited to testify by the Canadian parliamentary subcommittee. Inconvenient information would get in the way of imperial propaganda narratives.
The next day, the subcommittee’s report, driven by NED-funded groups, would claim China was committing ‘genocide’ in Xinjiang, and on February 21, 2021, an opposition motion pushing this genocide narrative and demanding that the Canadian government support this narrative, was passed unanimously by parliamentarians who voted.
Tibet under a subcommittee’s microscope
Just as the Xinjiang genocide narrative originated with US-backed, anti-China zealots, the Tibet ‘scandal’ came thanks to an NED funded group seeking to interfere in Canadian politics. Tibet Action Institute, based in the US, came out with a report in December 2021, comparing Tibetan boarding schools to Canadian residential schools (a brutal genocidal effort to assimilate Indigenous children and separate them from their parents). The Canadian state-backed Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) did a news report just days later, on December 8, 2021, promoting this TAI report.
The core flaws in the TAI report were summed up by Jerry Grey in article for The Canada Files:
It claims that 800 000 children, a full 22 per cent of Tibet’s population are being forced into these boarding schools
It ignores how vast Tibet is, being a “vast region of 2.5 million square kilometers, with a population of 3.6 million people”. Grey explains that the “distance between parts of the region makes boarding schools necessary for kids.”
It claims that students in Tibet are uniquely not allowed to practice religion in school. This ignores “Article 8 of the Education Law of China, [which states that] all students in all schools throughout China are forbidden to practice religion.” China’s policy around religion may not be preferred by religious people, but the treatment of students in Tibetan boarding schools is to the same standard as others across China.
It partially relied upon “first-hand accounts” provided by “Tibetans in exile”, and “statements from Tibetans in exile with a ‘strong knowledge of Tibet’”. The Tibetan diaspora (mainly made up of self-exiled people) abroad is dominated by NED (CIA-front) funded groups and those who either occasionally take money from the NED, or are NED adjacent. This reliance is a good way to ensure an anti-China result.
In February 2023, the same Subcommittee on International Human Rights launched a study into ‘colonial boarding schools’ in Tibet. The methods taken to ensure an anti-China report were similar to those which ensured an anti-China Xinjiang report in 2020. They focused on amplifying the claims of NED funded groups (Tibet Action Institute, Tibet Watch and the Canada-Tibet Committee), and brought in witnesses who would sing to the same tune, while avoiding calling any witnesses who would challenge the comparison of Tibetan boarding schools to the genocidal Canadian residential schools.
The report called for sanctions on Chinese officials and a special temporary immigration pathway to get more Tibet dissidents into Canada, among other actions.
Now, it is time to wait. If history is a suitable guide, we’ll see a Canadian parliamentary vote about the ‘colonial’ Tibetan boarding schools, within the next year. If the Canadian left opposes the demonization of Chinese policy in Tibet concretely, perhaps not. Given the path taken by the Canadian left up to now, only opposing government policy changes (even those which are bluntly foreshadowed) or parliamentary votes after they occur, it is quite unlikely genuine resistance will be had before such a vote.
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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Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah has broken numerous stories, including how the Canadian Armed Forces trained neo-Nazi "journalist" Roman Protasevich while he was with the Azov Battalion, and how a CIA front group (the NED) funded the group (URAP) which drove the "Uyghur genocide" vote in parliament to pass this February. Jonah recently wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
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