Liberal MP Selectively Supports Uygur “Refugees,” Ignores Yemeni Refugees

Written by: William Dere

Western countries like Canada, following in step with the USA, have banalized the grievous term of genocide. Automatically, all of China’s policies towards its national minorities are labelled “genocide.” Then, to the minds of those caught in the Uygur genocide mentality, there must be “refugees.”

Sameer Zuberi, Liberal MP for Pierrefonds-Dollard, QC is the Chair of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Co-Chair of the Canadian-Uyghur Parliamentary Friendship Group. Zuberi presented a non-binding motion (M-62) in Parliament on June 21, 2022 to “urgently leverage Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s Refugee and Humanitarian Program to expedite the entry of 10,000 Uyghurs … over two years starting in 2024 into Canada.” Zuberi wants Canada to create a dedicated refugee stream for Uygurs. If it is an “urgent” matter, why wait until 2024?

The response of the Canadian government was, through the press secretary to Immigration Minister Sean Fraser: “Canada prioritizes those requiring asylum in terms of vulnerability, not nationality or religion – in keeping with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees resettlement handbook.”

So where are the Uygur refugees? Zuberi, as co-chair of the Uygur friendship group is fed information and talking points by the two full time staffers from the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, funded by the USA-government funded National Endowment for Democracy. The Globe and Mail article reporting on Zuberi’s motion, reprinted on the URAP website, quotes Mehmet Tohti, executive director of URAP, “there are tens of thousands of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities who have fled China for countries in the Middle East and Turkey.” No evidence was provided in the Globe & Mail nor by Tohti and for that matter by Zuberi.

In the same article, the Globe & Mail plays the numbers game by quoting an Associated Press dispatch that one in 25 people in Xinjiang “has been sentenced to prison on terrorism-related charges, in what is the highest known imprisonment rate in the world.” Hyperbole aside, this claim works out to 508,800 people. Is this included in the “1.8 million to 3 million” Uygurs imprisoned in concentration camps or in addition to? The Western media keeps tripping over its own numbers. There are some Western media outlets that have debunked the disinformation of Uygur imprisonment and torture by revealing the truth.

So where are these so-called Uygur “refugees”? The Western claim is that 14 to 24 per cent of the Uygur population is incarcerated in internment camps. This would make you think that the Uygur people would be clamouring to get out. Instead, Xinjiang’s economy is thriving. It is also one of the desired locations for tourism for Chinese and international travelers. There is emigration from Xinjiang, as from other regions of China. There are about 1,600 to 2,000 Uygur immigrants in Canada and 8,900 to 10,000 in the US, depending on how the numbers are politically used.

Uygur immigrants in Canada and the US are targeted and used by separatist organizations such as URAP and the World Uyghur Congress in their anti-China campaigns. According to a report from Voice of America, propaganda organ of the US State Department, there are 50,000 Uygurs residing in Turkey. However, this report does not say whether they are refugees or if any of them are in refugees camps, like the Yemeni or Syrian refugee camps. The US has admitted zero (0) Uygur refugees into the country in 2019 and 2020.

A UN Report released in July 2020, on the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, and other associated terrorist groups states there were up to 3,500 Uygur fighters in the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (aka, Turkistan Islamic Party) engaged in fighting in Syria. 500 ETIM/TIP fighters were camped in Afghanistan according to the report. The ETIM is designated a terrorist organization by the UN since 2002, but it was removed from the terrorist list of the US in 2020, as they ramped up their agit-prop against China. The VOA reported that this change in the US war on terror was hailed by the Uygur separatists.

There appears to be coordinated actions to push the Uygur narrative during this month. There is an onslaught of actions and misinformation from the US, European Union, Canadian politicians, and the mainstream media, against China’s alleged mistreatment of the Uygur people in Xinjiang. The EU passed a resolution on June 10 decrying a “risk of genocide” of Uygurs in Xinjiang. The EU resolution hedged its bets and did not go as far the Canadian Parliamentary resolution, of February 22, 2021, which falsely claimed a wholesale “genocide.” On June 21, 2022, the “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act” passed by USA politicians came into effect, which bans all products originating in Xinjiang. A whole article would be required to address the fallacy of this law, as with other US laws and sanctions that aim to attack the livelihoods of people and destabilize “enemy nations.”

Along comes Zuberi. On the same day that the US law on “forced labor” in Xinjiang came into effect, he proposed his motion in Parliament to fast track 10,000 imagined Uygur refugees into Canada. Zuberi accomplished his first task of getting House of Commons to pass the resolution declaring Uygur genocide. A similar resolution in the Senate was defeated. Zuberi is assuming this new task, after the World Uyghur Congress called on Canada to accept Uygur “refugees.” Although URAP failed in its attempt to use the courts to ban goods from Xinjiang, there’s a chance Zuberi will seek to get the Canadian government to ban Xinjiang goods, just as the US did recently.

All progressive Canadians should pressure the Canadian government to accept more genuine refugees. The government seems to not care about the plight of the 4.3 million Yemenis displaced by the civil war in Yemen over the past seven years. Military aggression by Saudi Arabia has killed 377,000 Yemenis, including 10,000 children. Canada is an accomplice in the Saudi killing of Yemenis as the Trudeau government approved the $15 billion arms deals with the Saudis in 2016.

Where are the resolutions to accept Yemeni refugees? Where are the MPs outraged at the wholesale slaughter of the Yemeni people with armaments sold by the Canadian military industrial complex? Sameer Zuberi should be asking these questions as he positions himself as a darling of the Uygur human rights industry.

William Ging Wee Dere is the author of the award-winning “Being Chinese in Canada, The Struggle for Identity, Redress and Belonging.” (Douglas & McIntyre, 2019). He was a political organizer and a leading activist in the 2-decade movement for redress of the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act.

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