Ottawa: Following release of a report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner on the human rights situation, Canada has again expressed its grave concern with the ongoing gross and systemic human rights violations occurring in Xinjiang, China and said that it is affecting Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities.
Canada asked the China government to uphold its international human rights obligations and to respond to the concerns and the recommendations raised in the High Commissioner’s report.
In a statement, Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs said that the UN report revealed the serious, systemic human rights abuses and violations occurring in Xinjiang and the kind of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in the China.
“The release of this much-anticipated report was critical. The findings reflect the credible accounts of grave human rights violations taking place in Xinjiang. This report makes an important contribution to the mounting evidence of serious, systemic human rights abuses and violations occurring in Xinjiang. It finds that the arbitrary and discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity,” the minister said in a statement.
She said that there are sufficient evidence to point out systemic, state-led human rights violations by Chinese authorities, including the mass arbitrary detention of over 1 million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim ethnic minorities on the basis of their religion and ethnicity, as well as widespread mass surveillance, political re-education, sexual and gender-based violence, forced labour, torture and forced sterilization.
Canada condemned human rights violations by China and said that it has been working to address the risk of goods produced from forced labour, from any country, from entering Canadian and global supply chains.