Women walk past a propaganda slogan promoting ethnic unity in 'the new era', in both Chinese and Uyghur languages, in Yarkant, northwestern China's Xinjiang region, on July 18, 2023.PEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images
China’s embassy in Ottawa launched a public broadside at the Canadian government Monday over its characterization of human rights violations in Xinjiang, an indication that bilateral relations remain poor even under a new Chinese ambassador.
Beijing’s diplomatic mission took to social media to challenge an account by the Department of Global Affairs of a June 19-22 visit to the northwestern Chinese province by Canadian ambassador Jennifer May.
The department said in a statement Sunday that during her visit Ms. May “raised concerns over credible reports of systematic violations of human rights occurring in Xinjiang affecting Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities, including those raised by UN experts, and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.”
Further, Ms. May “expressed Canada’s concerns over limits on Uyghur-language education and the practice of forcibly placing Uyghur children into residential schools.”
China’s embassy, in a statement on X, accused the Canadian government of recycling lies. The embassy’s aggressive style of language and tone evoked a practice that has been called “wolf warrior” diplomacy.
The Global Affairs statement on Ms. May’s Xinjiang visit, the embassy said, “repeated the same old rhetoric, expressing so-called concerns based on fabricated rumors and reports with ulterior motives.”
China recently changed its ambassador to Canada. Wang Di arrived in June to replace Cong Peiwu, who left in April as a public inquiry was probing Chinese government interference in Canadian elections.
Reports of mass internment of Uyghurs at what China said were merely “vocational education and training centres,” first drew international attention around 2017. When she was United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet visited Xinjiang in 2022. Her office’s report on the trip said China’s treatment of Uyghurs in the region may amount to crimes against humanity.
Xinjiang has been a particular concern for rights activists, Western governments and academics, who have said that China has imposed an unprecedented system of forced labour on the millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims who live in the region.
China rejects this and has been eager for outsiders to endorse its version of events in Xinjiang, a region the embassy said “enjoys social stability, economic prosperity, ethnic unity, religious harmony” and where “people there live a decent life,” with their linguistic rights protected.
The Chinese embassy, went so far as to allege Global Affairs is misrepresenting, or failing to disclose, what Ms. May saw during her brief visit. Other visitors, it said, “spoke highly” of progress in Xinjiang and Beijing’s efforts there.
“We urge the Canadian side to be objective and unbiased and show the Canadian people the real Xinjiang that Ambassador May saw during her visit,” the embassy said on X. It alleged Global Affairs didn’t reveal “what Ambassador May really saw and heard.”
The diplomatic mission accused the Canadian government of “turning a blind eye to its own racial issues,” saying in this country “indigenous people still face systematic racial discrimination and unfair treatment, and homeless people cannot have their rights protected.”
Global Affairs declined to comment on the matter.
Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to China, said the Chinese government is “quite upset” at the Hogue Foreign Interference Commission which has been investigating meddling by the Chinese state and its proxies in Canadian democracy and is set to hold another round of hearings this fall. Its first report in May described China as “most persistent and sophisticated foreign interference threat to Canada.”
He said he doesn’t believe Canada will be able to resolve its concerns over Xinjiang. China seems determined to let its minorities retain nothing more than “folkloric aspects of their culture,” the former envoy said.