Human-rights agenda disguises self-interest

By Iain Marlow

It is a land cloaked in the smoke of charred mutton and the thick, greasy fumes of oil extraction. It is where deserts meet mountains, where smooth Chinese faces fade into grizzled beards, where Islamic crescents cast shadows on the gold and blood red flags of Chinese communism.

It is China’s northwest Xinjiang province.

There, Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen and member of China’s Uyghur Muslim minority, is standing trial on charges of separatism against the Chinese state.

He emerged in early February from China’s gulag-like prison system and testified in court before his horrified family that he had been tortured. Police threatened to bury him alive if he did not sign a false confession, Celil said.

In Xinjiang, being accused of separatism usually means death. Canada, however, has obtained assurances from China that Celil will not be shot, but it is still possible that he will remain imprisoned as China does not recognize dual citizenship.

As we settle into another round of Canada versus China – or Stephen Harper the human rights advocate against communists and the “almighty dollar” of trade – it must be said simply that Harper is not fighting for human rights at all.

Harper, a man who once called human rights commissions an act of totalitarianism, is merely standing up for a Canadian citizen arrested abroad. If Harper were interested in human rights, and not just consular affairs, he would discuss Celil’s oppressed minority with China. This requires courage far beyond political posturing at home and making diplomatic asides at international conferences and to the media.

The Uyghurs inhabit an historically globalized region that collided first with Buddhism, then Islam. It borders eight countries and for centuries has been a nexus of conquests and rebellion.

It is also a looming crisis. It is not a bloodbath, certainly. But violence bubbles beneath widespread oppression in Xinjiang. And unlike Tibet, it is a Chinese human rights issue with no international appeal.

Xinjiang is China’s largest and most oil-saturated province. There, windmills rotate lazily in the winds blowing out of ochre sunsets. It is where North Korea’s Kim Jong-il sent his Japanese chef to gather luscious, elongated melons.

It also presents severe problems to a government in Beijing several time zones and ideologies away.

Today, both official and non-official discrimination is rampant. Separatists or those so labelled, such as Celil, face arbitrary arrests and alleged torture. China executes more people than any other country and Xinjiang is the only Chinese province that routinely kills political prisoners.

Throughout the 1990s, separatists, fighting for an independent “East Turkestan,” blew up parts of Xinjiang’s major cities. This culminated in 1997, when extremists – in response to the brutal suppression of a peaceful protest – detonated bombs in the provincial capital, ripping apart two busloads of Chinese civilians.

In the bombing’s wake, Chinese police arrested thousands of Uyghurs, threw them in jail and tortured them, according to Human Rights Watch. An Amnesty International report said that between 1997 and 1999 the state executed more than 200 people in Xinjiang.

In 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan, Xinjiang’s neighbour, and the Chinese government rejigged its rhetoric to coincide with America’s war on terror. Separatists morphed into “terrorists” and Beijing cracked down anew.

Canada, with no citizens to care about then, remained silent.

The rhetoric that Canada trumps trade for human rights in China is false. Canada has not once stood up for the human rights of China’s citizens. The Canadian government has always acted in narrow self-interest.

The following Canadian “irritants” to China, held up in the media as examples of our moral superiority, do not stand scrutiny.

The Conservative government’s April 2006 accusation that the Chinese were engaging in industrial espionage, for example, is not human rights diplomacy.

In September 2006, the Conservatives bestowed honourary citizenship upon the Dalai Lama. But the Dalai Lama is to ethnic minority struggle what Bono is to poverty.

The Dalai Lama makes people feel better about themselves, not worse about the condition of Tibetans. Awarding him citizenship reeks of tokenism and is in no way meaningful for advancing the rights of Tibetans.

Huseyin Celil is a similar case. The government cares to the extent that he is Canadian. Even if Celil walks, Beijing will not change its violent policies in Xinjiang.

Outside China, there is almost no talk of Uyghurs. It is famously unsexy to champion a Muslim cause in the media today unless it maligns U.S. foreign policy. But a Chinese Muslim separatist issue? Any takers?

That is why Liberal critics of Conservative “human rights” diplomacy – since Harper’s awkwardly aggressive diplomacy in Vietnam in November 2006, when he seemed to lambaste all of Asia – have only scraped together a feeble criticism of the damage to trade relations.

This is so morally bankrupt that it is painful to watch; historically, criticism of China’s human rights record rarely affects trade.

The dichotomy is not between human rights and trade. The real divide is between frivolous moral posturing and an honest pursuit of human rights in China.

The metamorphosis of Celil into a political weapon for the Conservatives is a shameful abomination.

In a world dominated by China’s economic influence, discussing Canadian consular cases and making diplomatic asides are infinitely less controversial than making concrete efforts to improve the human rights of China’s citizens – whether they are lawyers, environmentalists, or persecuted Muslims arguing for an independent state.