The House of Commons yesterday for the second time in two years unanimously passed a motion condemning China for crimes against humanity. By a 322-0 vote, MPs said Uyghur Muslims “face pressure and intimidation by the Chinese state.”.“We know that at least one million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are in concentration camps and have been forced into labour,” said Liberal MP Sameer Zuberi (Pierrefonds-Dollard, QC). “Their identities are being erased and they are being forced to become people they are not. This is abhorrent.”.“We have seen this happen in history to different people,” said Zuberi. “We have seen communities wiped off the face of the earth and the Uyghur people are suffering that today.”.According to Blacklock's Reporter, Motion 62 that passed yesterday said Uyghurs “face the serious risk of mass arbitration detention, mass arbitrary separation of children from parents, forced sterilization, forced labour, torture and other atrocities.” It asked that Canada accept 10,000 Uyghur refugees..The Commons in 2021 passed a Conservative motion that Canada censure China for genocide and petition the International Olympic Committee to relocate the 2022 Winter Games from Beijing. The earlier vote marked the first time MPs recognized ongoing genocide under a United Nations Convention On The Prevention And Punishment Of The Crime Of Genocide ratified by Parliament in 1952..“My grandmother was a Holocaust survivor,” Conservative MP Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan, AB) told the Commons. “She was a Jewish child who grew up in Germany and hid out and many of her family members were killed. I was raised with an awareness of the grievous injustice.”.Chinese Ambassador to Canada Cong Peiwu earlier dismissed parliamentary protests. Cong said the atrocities were “lies spread by a very few certain people due to anti-China intentions.".“For those MPs voting in the House of Commons, most of them I’m afraid have never been to Xinjiang or not even to China in the past years,” Cong told reporters in 2021. “How can they judge the situation on the ground? They simply, some of them, are doing things with political intentions and trying to make political gains.”.“They are trying to do these things, to smear China,” said Cong. “The so-called genocide, those kinds of claims, I’d like to point out once again are just lies of the century.”.“For China, we are firmly opposed to any activity involving this kind of interference in our domestic affairs and undermining our sovereignty and security, and we will take resolute measures to counter that, to safeguard our national interests,” said Ambassador Cong.
