Actions by the Chinese Communist Party in the country’s far western Xinjiang autonomous region constitute genocide and Ottawa must take action, a Canadian parliamentary subcommittee said Wednesday.
The House of Commons subcommittee on international human rights said it came to its conclusion after hearing two days of testimony from witnesses that include “survivors of the government of China’s atrocities” in the region.
“Nearly two million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims are being detained, including men, women, and children as young as 13 years old,” the subcommittee said in a news release. “Witnesses noted that this is the largest mass detention of a minority community since the Holocaust.”
The subcommittee called on the federal government to recognize China’s actions in the region as genocide and to implement so-called Magnitsky legislation against officials responsible.