Green Party leader Annamie Paul.
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Written by: William Dere
Annamie Paul and the Green Party of Canada have gone mainstream in Canadian politics in their denunciation of China’s “genocidal” treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Paul wants to move the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing to Canada’s great white north with the possible aid of the United States.
Paul gave her support to a letter signed by 13 MP’s from the five political parties asking the International Olympic Committee to re-locate the Winter games. The letter compared the Beijing games to the 1936 Berlin games under the Nazis.
Paul does not explain what she means by the “ongoing genocide” against the Uyghurs nor does she offer any evidence. The West relies on one Christian zealot propagandist, German-American Adrian Zenz, who has never set foot in China, as their leading source of information on Xinjiang. This information ranges from: two million Uyghurs in detention camps, forced sterilization of female Uyghurs, forced labour and slavery and today’s smear du jour, forced rape of Uyghur women in detention. These allegations have been debunked by progressive writers.
China explains that as a process of de-radicalization, re-education camps were set up to train Uyghurs in job skills and to speak Mandarin, in order to find jobs (thus the forced labour fabrication). This was an effective way to counter being recruited into terrorism. Since the education process began, China has not had a terrorist attack in seven years.
The Uyghur population has doubled in the last 40 years from 5.96 million to 12 million. Zenz used public information to do his erroneous math, falsely stating that 80% of Uyghur women were fitted with IUD’s, whereas the correct number is 8.7 per cent. Anyone visiting Xinjiang today will see a different picture of reality to what the US is projecting.
Paul displays her inexperience in geopolitics and her ignorance of the realities in China by repeating the same narrative churned out by the US State Department and the CIA. The Five Eyes security network, consisting of US, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, are in concert in their attacks on China. Using the humbug of human rights and opposing authoritarianism, the Anglosphere conditions the population to fear and hate China.
The new US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, repeats the same rhetoric as the old one, Mike Pompeo. Their denunciation of China follows the game plan developed by the Obama-Biden-Clinton clique in their “pivot to Asia” containment of China strategy in 2011. Independent journalists have written extensively elsewhere to refute the US Cold War rhetoric against China related to Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, human rights and theft of intellectual property, etc. The Grayzone has debunked the fabrications on China pushed by media like the New York Times which produces material in sync with the Falun Gong Epoch Times. This is the kind of material that Annamie Paul adheres to take her ideological stand.
The more troubling implications of Paul’s pronouncement is what it means for Canada. She wants to move the Winter games here because she does not support the games being held in a country that commits genocide against its own people. What Indigenous Nations have been subjected to over 400 years of European colonialism was and continues to be genocide.
The MP’s letter says nothing new: “Some may argue that sports and politics should not mix. We would respond that when genocide is happening, it is no longer a matter of politics, but of human rights and crimes against humanity.” This applies to Canada.
Paul would want to hold the games on unceded Indigenous lands. As Abdul Malik wrote in Canadian Dimension, Paul is calling for Canadian exceptionalism as she ignores the ongoing genocide and violation of human rights of the Indigenous people in Canada. Malik points out that there are at least 57 drinking water advisories in Indigenous reserves and a lack of decent housing. The more immediate violation of Indigenous people’s human rights is the inferior health care in response to the pandemic. Malik writes “Reserves left derelict by the Canadian government have seen almost 15,000 cases of COVID-19, a significantly higher per-capita rate than the general population.
What Paul doesn’t see is if Canada holds the Winter Games again, it may be exposed as an imperialist country. Canada supports the US in its Cold War against China. While most Global South countries praise China’s handling of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Canada lines up with countries of the Global North to denounce China.
Canada continues to support the Duvalierist regime in Haiti. Canada still does not recognize the last elections in Venezuela and continues to hold onto the myth that the US puppet Juan Guaido is the president. As a leader in the Lima Group, Canada acts as the water boy for US domination in South America in supporting the 2019 coup in Bolivia. Canada’s track record as an imperialist country in Latin America is horrific. Paul is unintentionally working to project this image to the world by hosting the Winter Games.
Canadian parliamentarians may have some effect if they have the political will to address the genocidal practices against Indigenous Nations. If they concentrate their fire here rather than deflecting human rights issues away from home, to what they project as human rights concern in China, they might have some credibility.
William Ging Wee Dere is the author of the award-winning “Being Chinese in Canada, The Struggle for Identity, Redress and Belonging.” (Douglas & McIntyre, 2019). He was a political organizer and a leading activist in the 2-decade movement for redress of the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act.
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This post was originally published on Articles – The Canada Files.