In 2007, Kayum Masimov gave an interview to the magazine Maclean’s. “It’s been 16 years, and we were already talking about bullying and harassment. The title of the article was revealing: “Beijing is always watching”. »
Beijing (Beijing) is watching all the time. Even in Toronto. Even in Montreal.
All that to say that the shocking reports on Chinese interference that have been shaking the Trudeau government for weeks did not shock Kayum Masimov, coordinator of the Uyghur Rights Defense Project.
They rather made him sigh. “This is not new, we have been warning elected officials and the security forces for years. What is happening in Ottawa, for us, was an open secret. We’ve known that for a long time. Unfortunately, no one listened to us. »
The Chinese schemes to influence the Canadian elections, the police stations that would have created a “climate of terror” within the diaspora of Brossard and Montreal… none of this made him fall from his chair.
Seated in a small Uyghur restaurant in LaSalle, Kayum Masimov tells me more or less what he told the journalist from Maclean’sin 2007.
With the impression of repeating itself, inevitably.
But with the hope that we listen to him a little, this time.
“We fled the repression thinking that once we crossed the border, we would be safe from intimidation and harassment, but it continues, even in Montreal”, begins Kayum Masimov.
No one escapes the long arm of the Chinese state, he says. Across Canada, members of the Uyghur community are facing threats, veiled or not. Many receive harassing bot messages. Some are targeted by cyberattacks, others by social media trolling campaigns. Some even say they were followed by car.
Almost all of them live in anguish at not knowing the fate of their loved ones who have remained in China.
There, a million Uyghurs have been sent to re-education camps, where they are reduced to slavery. All means of communication – phone, text, social media – are closely monitored, if not downright cut off.
Beijing’s goal, Mr. Masimov believes, is to interfere in the lives of exiles to remind them that they will never be completely free. And to silence them.
Too often it works. “Everyone is taken hostage because of the family left there. It leads to self-censorship. Most people are apolitical. »
Mr. Masimov says Chinese agents sometimes try to recruit informants from within the community. “It instills a sense of fear and paranoia. Everyone suspects others. »
An old trick that Beijing likes to use to discredit its critics is to throw accusations of racism out of the blue, underlines Kayum Masimov.
In 2019, for example, the Chinese ambassador to Ottawa suggested in an open letter that Canada and its Western allies were “white supremacists” because they demanded the release of the two Michaels.1.
These criticisms do not always come directly from the embassy. On March 19, about thirty people demonstrated in Chinatown. “Montreal’s Chinese Community Says Police Investigation into Alleged ‘Chinese Police Stations’ Amounts to Racial Discrimination – and Incites Racism and Fear,” City News reported.2.
And then, in November, Yuesheng Wang, an employee of Hydro-Quebec, appeared on espionage charges. At the Montreal courthouse, a woman who came “as an observer” saw fit to explain to journalists that it was not good to accuse this gentleman, that it was going to cause a wave of anti-Asian racism in Quebec…
During these two events, it was the president of a resolutely pro-Beijing organization who spoke about racism in front of the cameras. Let’s be honest: this woman does not represent “the Chinese community of Montreal” so much as the interests of a dictatorial regime.
It’s not just Beijing that is trying to create a diversion, laments Kayum Masimov. “It is very unfortunate that our elected officials repeat the line of defense of the Communist Party”, he notes.
Entangled in this affair, elected Liberals have indeed worried about the slippages that may result from recent police and journalistic investigations.
The concern, although self-serving, is legitimate. We shouldn’t start thinking that all Chinese Canadians pose a threat to public safety.
Insinuations and witch hunts must be avoided at all costs. Avoid stigmatizing an entire community. Because no, Canadians of Chinese origin are not a monolithic group.
Really not, actually.
Ask Uyghurs, Taiwanese, Hong Kongers and Tibetans what they think. They are the first victims of Chinese interference.
They are the ones who demand that we shed full light on this interference. They don’t need to be taught a lesson by telling them about the risks of racist abuse.
The objective is not to stigmatize them, but to ensure their safety on Canadian soil.
Kayum Masimov wants us to talk about “real things”, like the fifty or so threatening calls he received when he started defending the rights of the Uyghurs.
“The RCMP came back to me after several months to tell me that unfortunately they were not equipped to determine the origin of the calls. All she could suggest was to change residence and phone number. Those are real things. »
Things that have been going on for a long time, at home, and that we must no longer tolerate.
In 2022, Mr. Masimov’s organization released a report on China’s campaign of harassment and intimidation against Uyghur Canadians3. The title of the report: Intentional and endless.
Two years earlier, in another report, Amnesty International and the Canadian Coalition for Human Rights in China called on Ottawa to address the problem “urgently”, since Canadian activists “no longer feel safe and live in fear4 “.
“I have a feeling of frustration,” admits Mr. Masimov. I think it was this same feeling that led a Canadian secret service agent to leak information to the media. Because he too was faced with inaction and ignorance. »
When we met, Kayum Masimov had just returned from Ottawa, where representatives of the Chinese diaspora had been invited to tell all this to parliamentarians. One more time.
“Our fear is that in 16 years, it will be the same thing. Are we still going to have to testify in front of Parliament? Is anyone going to listen to us? »