Reception of refugees | Canada agrees to receive 10,000 Uyghurs

(Ottawa) Uyghurs and Turkic Muslims relentlessly hunted down and persecuted by the Chinese regime will be able to find refuge in Canada. The Canadian government is promising to welcome 10,000 over a two-year period, starting in 2024.

The House of Commons unanimously adopted, on Wednesday, with 322 votes for and none against, the motion concocted to this effect by Liberal MP Sameer Zuberi.

Screams and applause rang out after the announcement of the result; the ovation lasted about three minutes.

Sameer Zuberi was congratulated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and then walked around the room to shake hands with MPs from all parties.

The accelerated program will allow Uyghurs and Turkic Muslims who have fled China to find refuge in Canada.

Because even if they have settled in Turkey or other Muslim-majority countries, they continue to be hunted down by Beijing.

“We know, thanks to the [laboratoire d’idées] Wilson Center, that on the orders of China, more than 1,500 Uighurs have been deported or detained,” Zuberi said.

“They are vulnerable. They are still being persecuted,” he added.

A workable plan

A motion passed in the House is not binding on the government. But the program was approved by Justin Trudeau and his ministers.

Mr. Zuberi is delighted that the government has embraced its migration plan, he says he is convinced that despite the failures of the machine at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the plan will work.

“We have welcomed a record number of permanent residents and reached our refugee resettlement targets in 2022. I have full confidence that the government can and will achieve this,” he argued.

There is currently in Canada, according to him, a Uyghur community of about 3,000 people, who have taken up residence in particular in Montreal and on the South Shore.

“A first step”

Bloc MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe also savors a victory, he who has defended the Uyghur cause for several years here and internationally.

“I can tell you that it was bawling in the stands,” he said, speaking of the Uyghur delegation which was in parliament to watch the vote.

“I myself had tears in my eyes. Sameer crossed the Chamber and we hugged. It’s a great moment, ”dropped the chosen one.

Like his Liberal accomplice, he believes in the feasibility of the operation.

“Where I believe is that the Uyghurs will hound the Canadian government. They are well organized. Today is the first step,” said Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.

Uyghur gratitude

Coming from Germany to attend this “historic moment” which took place in Ottawa, the president of the World Uyghur Congress, Dulkin Isa, expressed his gratitude to Canada.

“When this initiative got underway last year, we had hope, but we did not expect such support from Parliament and members of the government,” he said at a press conference.

Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet reported in a September report on “crimes against humanity” in China’s Xinjiang region.

She denounced “the extent of the arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of the Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim groups”.

At least 3 million of this persecuted minority are currently languishing in “concentration camps”, and “it is not known how many have died”, said Dulkin Isa on Wednesday.

A genocide?

In February 2021, the House of Commons recognized the existence of a genocide perpetrated by China against the Uighurs in the Xinjiang region.

The entire Trudeau cabinet had abstained from voting at that time.

But now the ministers have just done it, in a way, since motion M-62 uses the term “genocide”.

“Does that mean that now the Canadian government is able to say it loud and clear? This is the question that comes to mind,” explains Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe.