Calls to boycott Olympics grow

China weaponizes its large and lucrative market to silence critics who protest Beijing’s abysmal human rights record. Canada has been particularly meek when dealing with China for fear of punitive tariffs, but trade is a two-way relationship and China may finally be facing consequences for its actions.

In response to mounting concerns about genocide and slave labour, Conservative Sen. Leo Housakos introduced a bill Wednesday that would ban all imports from China’s Xinjiang province. Xinjiang, also known as East Turkestan, is the homeland of the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority group that China is currently eradicating through concentration camps, torture and mass surveillance. China recently began using the Uyghurs as slaves to produce exports for the international market.

In a phone interview, Housakos said, “I hope my bill is the first clear and unequivocal message from a G7 country that asserts that we will no longer tolerate China’s egregious human rights abuses. We will use the leverage we have, which is access to our wealthy consumer markets.” Canada’s current legislation to ban goods produced through slave labour is ineffective, a sentiment echoed by MPS across all political parties.

In parallel to this, Bloc MP Alexis Brunelle-duceppe endorsed a motion at the World Uyghur Congress in Prague last week which called for the Beijing Olympics to be cancelled, relocated or postponed until the genocide is addressed.

Brunelle-duceppe intends to put forward a bill in December that will ask Canada to make these demands as well, noting that his parliamentary contacts in the United States and United Kingdom have been applying similar pressure in their respective countries. “If the Tokyo Olympics could be postponed for a pandemic, the Beijing Olympics can be postponed for a genocide,” he said in an interview.

Momentum to boycott the Olympics has grown since Chinese tennis champion Peng Shuai disappeared after accusing a former high-ranking Communist Party politico of sexual coercion. While it’s depressing that a genocide incited less of a response than a tennis star, at least Peng’s disappearance is prompting people to now pay attention to China’s human rights abuses.

Between these developments and the Liberals’ recent openness to boycotting the Olympics, it seems that China may finally face some accountability for its behaviour. Analysts have also argued that the Liberal government may, based on its recent throne speech, finally begin working with allies to counter China’s growing influence.

This is a welcome but long overdue development, given that Trudeau and most of his cabinet refused to even acknowledge the existence of the Uyghur genocide in a parliamentary vote last February.

It is sad, though, that much of the burden of opposing an obvious and egregious injustice has fallen on the shoulders of opposition politicians — but this is what happens when a government prioritizes the esthetic of social justice over real advocacy. Perhaps the Uyghurs would find more support if Trudeau could find a way to be photographed crying over their bones.

The Trudeau government’s passivity in the face of genocide is not only morally contemptible, it is also legally questionable.

Sarah Teich, an international human rights lawyer and legal adviser to the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project (URAP), says, “Canada has ratified several treaties that impose international legal obligations to suppress and eliminate forced labour. Canada is also a state party to the UN Genocide Convention, which means that it is obligated not just to not commit genocide, but also to prevent genocide.”

When it comes to standing up for the Uyghurs, Teich says, “This isn’t something nice that we should do; it’s something that we must do.”

Mehmet Tohti, Executive Director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, is relieved to see concrete action which may help his people. Tohti has been advocating for Uyghur rights for two decades (for context, China’s colonial repression of East Turkestan goes back to the 1700s). He notes that interest in the Uyghurs’ plight picked up when news of the genocide emerged in 2017.

Since then, he has pushed parliamentarians to understand the crisis by making them listen to witnesses, experts and survivor testimony.

Though awareness of the genocide has been increasing over time, Tohti says that he is tired of verbal expressions of concern and argues that awareness must be followed by action. “The Canadian government hasn’t taken any serious steps to address or fulfil its international legal obligations,” Tohti says.

Housakos, whose bill will hopefully stymie Uyghur slave labour, concurs that Canada needs to provide a substantive, rather than symbolic, response to genocide. “It’s nice to apply diplomatic pressure and to implement boycotts, which obviously punishes Beijing, but we all know that the No. 1 element that is important to that regime is money,” he said.

The Senator’s approach to China creatively inverts the status quo. Typically, China uses threats of economic retaliation to punish countries that disobey it, because the underlying assumption is that no one wants to be cut off from the world’s second largest economy. However, Housakos notes that China has as much, if not more, to lose by alienating wealthy markets that drive its export-based economy.

This reinterpretation of trade politics is evidently workable. For example, after Australia consistently stood up to China’s bellicose foreign policy, China retaliated with punitive export restrictions that cost Australia’s economy billions of dollars. Australia simply absorbed the cost, losing only 0.5 per cent of its GDP.

Though Australia resisted China’s coercion, it was unable to meaningfully punish China for its misbehaviour, aside from the incident being highly embarrassing to Beijing. Yet it showed that when it comes to trade politics, conflict with China is not as one-sided as many once thought.

Though Canada cannot, by itself, impose significant costs on China, it can signal to other countries that targeted trade restrictions are possible and useful. If enough countries come together to cut off East Turkestan’s exports, withering the market for Uyghur slave goods, then that, in conjunction with boycotts of the Olympics, may finally send a message to China that ethnic cleansing has consequences.