Latest Anti-China Motion in the House of CommonsOn February 22, an anti-China motion was introduced in the House of Commons accusing China of "genocide."[1] The private member's opposition motion was put forward by Conservative Michael Chong (Wellington--Halton Hills, ON), and says: "(a) in the opinion of the House, the People's Republic of China has engaged in actions consistent with the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 260, commonly known as the 'Genocide Convention,' including detention camps and measures intended to prevent births as it pertains to Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims; and (b) given that (i) where possible, it has been the policy of the Government of Canada to act in concert with its allies when it comes to the recognition of a genocide, (ii) there is a bipartisan consensus in the United States where it has been the position of two consecutive administrations that Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims are being subjected to a genocide by the Government of the People's Republic of China, the House, therefore, recognize that a genocide is currently being carried out by the People's Republic of China against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, and call on the government to officially adopt this position." The motion carried following a recorded 266 yeas and zero nays. Members of the Trudeau cabinet were all absent for the vote with the exception of Minister of Foreign Affairs Marc Garneau who rose and stated for the record, "I abstain on behalf of the Government of Canada." A Bloc Québécois amendment to the motion was also passed calling on the International Olympic Committee to move the 2022 Winter Olympics "if the Chinese government continues this genocide." Trudeau made the vote on the non-binding resolution a free vote for Liberal MPs. According to a statement Garneau released the day of the vote, it was an exercise in parliamentary democracy, so each member could make a determination based on available evidence. In fact, by both supporting and avoiding taking a position on the motion, it looks more like a crass pragmatic manoeuvre on the part of the Liberal government so that it can have its cake and eat it too. Garneau's statement had that written all over it. It said while the government was deeply disturbed by the "horrific reports of human rights violations in Xinjiang" and takes any allegations of genocide extremely seriously, Canada has the responsibility to work with others in the international community to ensure any such allegations are subject to a credible, independent investigation. Four days later, Garneau and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held their first bilateral meeting "to advance work on the Roadmap for a Renewed U.S.-Canada Partnership launched by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Joe Biden at their virtual meeting on February 23, 2021." A readout of their meeting said that one of the things the two agreed on was the need to coordinate and more closely align their approaches to China. This follows another hostile motion against the People's Republic of China (PRC) that was introduced on the floor of the House in November 2020, which claimed that China was "threatening Canada's national interest and its values" and called for the government to "combat China's foreign operations in Canada."[2] It passed with the support of all four opposition parties and a handful of Liberal MPs, coming just days after the House of Commons subcommittee on international human rights released a report condemning China for committing "genocidal acts" against the Uyghur Muslim minority. That committee is typically used to come up with "background" to justify Canada’s foreign policy, especially when using "human rights" as a pretext for interfering in the affairs of other countries and peoples is on the agenda. In this case, like for all its "studies on the situation in Venezuela" aimed at justifying Canada's role in the U.S. regime-change operation there, the committee’s report aligns with the "evidence" provided by the host of one-sided "witnesses" it called to testify before it. These included U.S.-funded NGOs and other dyed-in-the-wool anti-China figures claiming to be defenders of democracy and human rights, with none of those whose investigations and experience debunk the "Uyghur genocide" narrative invited to present their case.[3] This ongoing campaign to demonize China is inspired by U.S. imperialist interests to isolate China and wipe it out as a global economic competitor. The economic and self-serving opposition to China is fueled by powerful private interests which are also fueling the so-called democratic uprising in Hong Kong, the reversal of the One China policy as concerns Taiwan and the U.S. war machine. Fabricating stories about what is taking place in China has nothing to do with the creation of modern democratic systems or sorting out problems on a peaceful political basis. This pretense to defend Muslim peoples has everything to do with pushing identity politics to divide and conquer. To believe that the likes of the U.S. and Canada give a damn about the Uyghurs is a real stretch of even the most turgid imagination. Self-serving promotion around issues raised in these resolutions, which is geared to create fears of foreign interference and foreign powers using Canadians as agents acting on their behalf, is to justify the strengthening of police powers in Canada to limit speech, so-called hate propaganda and a lot more. Now they have added the heinous crime of genocide to their lexicon of buzzwords which trivializes the meaning of the words and distorts the historical record to justify crimes in the present. February 24 marked the 133rd anniversary of the first full-scale
attack on labourers of Chinese origin in Vancouver in 1887 organized by
Keep Canada White official circles which also promoted anti-Chinese
propaganda. One attack after another took
place against
the Chinese. The federal government collected upwards of $23 million
in
Head Tax from Chinese citizens before the Chinese Immigration
Act of
1923 effectively halted arrivals from China altogether. In 1925,
houseboy Wong Foon Sing was kidnapped and tortured on orders from
BC's Attorney General, who said he was suspected of killing a
housemaid from the Shaughnessy subdivision of Vancouver.
Canada was founded on the basis of committing genocide against the Indigenous nations and the racist treatment of Chinese, Japanese and East Indians as well as declaring the superiority of the so-called English and French "founding nations" to the detriment of all others. To
say, after everything the Canadian state has done for over 100 years,
that some Canadians may be acting on behalf of a foreign power whether
consciously or without their knowledge and the state must defend us
strains credulity. It is to take a page out of the playbook which
justified the internment of not only the Japanese -- whose houses, land
and fishing fleets then all went into the hands of the Keep Canada White
proponents -- but also Germans, Ukrainians, Japanese, Italians,
communists and others who were also interned during World War II
claiming they were enemy aliens. Providing the secret security services with impunity to monitor, restrict and criminalize activities of those the state has labelled as actual or potential enemies, spies and ideological extremists is not going to solve a single problem facing the people. It is an act which sows the wind and no amount of propaganda aimed at wrecking political cohesion and disinforming the people's striving for empowerment will help those who are doing such things avoid the whirlwind which will come their way. So long as the criteria are to be kept secret in the name of national security, what is being promoted is to permit security services like the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Communications Security Establishment to surveil all opinions regarding politics and international affairs with no concern for what Canadians feel, think, or want. Self-serving polls financed by the very same forces doing such things are part of the problem, not a solution. It is clear that this latest motion against China was inspired by accusations originating from both the Trump and Biden administrations. As the motion indicates, "there is a bipartisan consensus by two consecutive administrations that Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims are being subjected to a genocide by the Government of the People's Republic of China." Investigation has revealed that the original accusation that China is committing genocide, made by Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who is virulently anti-China, and the subsequent agreement by Biden's Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, stem from a single source: a June 2020 paper by German researcher Adrian Zenz. Far from being "one of the world's leading scholars on the People's Republic of China," as he claims, Zenz is in fact an avowed far-right Christian fundamentalist and anti-communist whose main work consists of attacking the Chinese Communist Party. He is affiliated with the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and neo-conservative Jamestown Foundation in Washington, DC. A close review of Zenz's research reveals flagrant data abuse and outright falsehoods.[4] Shame on the Conservatives for proposing the motion and on all the
cartel parties in the House of Commons who went along with it without
hesitation. Whatever the Liberal Party government is up to with its
silence and abstention on the motion will be revealed as it further
conspires with the U.S. administration to attack China, justify bogus
extradition proceedings against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, and
shenanigans to get two Canadians imprisoned in China released. This is
the kind of discourse which claims to be speaking on behalf of Canadians
and is used to determine Canada's "national interest." The recent issue of TML
dealing with anti-China propaganda points out: "These private
interests have taken over the U.S. state, to which they have subordinated
the Canadian state. They use their apparatus of disinformation and
budgets to put the full weight of their states behind wiping out their
competition. The people of the countries which comprise the imperialist
system of states are supposed to take sides." Notes1. The legal definition of genocide under the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) is: "Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 2. See "'Yellow Peril' Hysteria All Over Again," Pauline Easton, TML Weekly, December 19, 2020. 3. See "Subcommittee
report declaring 'Uighur Genocide' dominated by researchers and groups
funded by CIA cut-out, National Endowment for Democracy," Aidan Jonah,
www.thecanadafiles.com, February 22, 2021. 4. See "U.S. State Department accusation of China 'genocide' relied on data abuse and baseless claims by far-right ideologue,"Gareth Porter and Max Blumenthal, thegrayzone.com, February 18, 2021.
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