Chinese media sees propaganda opportunity in 215 unmarked graves
For many Canadians, the discovery of 215 unmarked graves at a former B.C. residential school was a shocking reminder of a system designed to forcibly assimilate First Nations children.
For China’s Englishlanguage media, it appears to have also been a prime propaganda opportunity.
Major Chinese news outlets published editorials both decrying residential schools, and asserting that Canada had no right criticizing other countries’ human-rights records until it “put its own house in order.”
“Some Western countries, Canada included, like to preach to other countries about human rights affairs,” complained Zhang Zhouxiang of the government-run China Daily in a residential-schools column. “They should review their pasts and correct their own wrongdoings, instead of pointing fingers at others.”
But China is not the first country with an abysmal rights record to deflect rebukes from Canada by citing treatment of this country’s Indigenous people.
A seemingly organized Twitter campaign by Saudi Arabian citizens blasted Canada’s “cultural genocide” three years ago following criticism from Ottawa. Iran’s ambassador here prominently hosted Indigenous leaders in 2012 as his country lectured Canada amid bi-lateral tensions.
And long before that, the ambassador for South Africa’s former apartheid regime actually visited a reserve in Manitoba to highlight the plight of Indigenous people. Canada had been at the forefront of the movement to end Cape Town’s racist system.
There’s even a term for the rhetorical technique — whataboutism.
There’s no question many problems still plague Indigenous Canadians, from poor drinking water and sub-standard housing on reserves to sky-high unemployment.
But accusations of hypocrisy from a country like China just don’t hold water, argued Irwin Cotler, the Montrealbased chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
Canada is at least confronting its issues, he noted, with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission calling the residential schools a case of cultural genocide and the Commission on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls going even further. China, meanwhile, denies clear evidence of genocide against the minority Uyghur people, and bars any kind of impartial investigation of their situation, said Cotler.
“Not only does Canada have a right (to criticize China) but it has an obligation,” said the former federal justice minister. “If Canada has evidence of a genocide elsewhere, it has a responsibility to speak up and to unmask and expose.”
It’s true that Canada’s Indigenous history “is nothing to defend or be proud of,” echoed David Matas, another of the country’s most prominent human-rights lawyers.
But Beijing has worked hard to prevent Chinese citizens knowing anything about their own dark past — from the millions killed in the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward to the Tienanmen massacre — while clamping down on those who try to expose today’s many abuses, said Matas.
“In Canada right now, you’re not going to be jailed, you’re not going to be tortured, you’re not going to be executed simply because you raised these issues,” he said. “But if you raised humanrights issues in China now, that’s what will happen.”
Criticism around the Uyghur issue has particularly angered China recently and seemed to underlie commentary on the residential-school news.
In the Communist Partyowned Global Times, columnist Robert Walker acknowledged that Canadian governments have apologized for the schools, but alleged widespread persecution and violence against Indigenous people still occurs.
“Until one has gotten their own affairs in order, they should not seek to criticize others,” he wrote. “But Canada’s government, unfortunately, seems convinced that hypocrisy is a virtue.”
Other articles used the residential-schools question for a broader attack on critics in the West.
“No Western nations can hold the high moral ground because of the long history of grave human rights violations,” said Zhao Manfeng in Party-run People’s Daily.
“All the unwarranted accusations made by the Western countries against China stem from their own evils,” asserted another Global Times piece.