Sameer Zuberi is calling on the government to make room in its refugee intake numbers for 10,000 Uyghurs and members of other Turkic groups who have fled China and are living in third countries
An MP from Canada’s governing Liberal Party is tabling a parliamentary motion that he hopes will spur Ottawa to take action on Uyghurs persecuted by the Chinese government.
Mehmet Tohti, a Uyghur-Canadian and executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, said there are tens of thousands of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities who have fled China for countries in the Middle East and Turkey and are at risk of being sent back. Beijing, seeking to silence critics in these diasporas, is pressing countries to deport them to China.
Last month, Associated Press reported that nearly one in 25 people in a county in Xinjiang has been sentenced to prison on terrorism-related charges, in what is the highest known imprisonment rate in the world. The list of those sentenced is by far the biggest to emerge to date with the names of imprisoned Uyghurs, reflecting the sheer size of a Chinese government campaign that swept an estimated million or more people into internment camps and prisons.
It’s not the first time Canada has been urged to open its doors for Uyghur refugees. A Commons subcommittee on human rights, of which Mr. Zuberi was a member, in 2019 published a report that, among other things, called on Canada to create a dedicated refugee stream for Uyghurs and other groups persecuted by China. Such a stream has not been established.
However she said 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.
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