Last June, Canada’s delegation to the United Nations was part of an international effort calling for UN inspectors to have to assess reports of human rights violations against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims.
Chinese UN representative Jiang Duan promptly , noting that Canada “robbed Indigenous people of the land, killed them and eradicated their culture.”
The truth is, the Chinese government is taking a page out of Canada’s cultural genocide handbook in Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia — extinguishing multiple cultures within their borders.
With the 2022 Beijing Olympics underway, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s of the Games is perplexing.
Ongoing colonialism
is a specific kind of colonization where settlers seek to not only displace Indigenous people, but .
In Canada, this has , and the eradication of Indigenous culture and fragmentation of families (as was done through and the ).
China has used settler colonialism to destroy Uyghur and Tibetan cultures, moving large numbers of Han settlers .
International affairs scholar and anthropologist have labelled Chinese efforts in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia as settler colonialism.
As international relations scholar explains: “The basic premise behind development in contemporary China is not the empowerment of these peoples but their disempowerment, by making them dependent on the state, by destroying their traditional ways of being, and by taking away their dignity, ultimately through state violence.”
And Anand isn’t alone. Academics are pointing to ongoing settler colonialism along China’s borders. Identifying China as an imperial state, anthropologist argues that the regime’s settler colonialism has inflicted “dispossession and domination, including the loss of state sovereignty.”
In Canada, the Indian Residential School system — but the last , and colonialism is still ongoing.
The published detailing the horrific atrocities that occurred at Indian Residential Schools and its ongoing impact on communities.
The report also included that must be completed as steps toward reconciliation — in six years however, .
Summer 2021 was a period of reckoning for dredged up by unmarked graves at former Indian Residential Schools. And Canadians are still reckoning with the country’s acts of genocide as more .
We’ve now begun to face the realities of whats been happening in our own country, but we must maintain that same expectation in our relationships abroad.
Concerning parallels
For hundreds of thousands of children in China, being taken away from their homes and placed in boarding schools is a grim reality.
A recent report by the estimates that the Chinese government is forcing three out of four Tibetan students into boarding schools and separating up to 900,000 children from their families.
The goal, explains the Tibet Action Institute, is to “eliminate Tibetan identity and supplant it with a Chinese nationalist identity in order to neutralize any resistance to Chinese Communist Party rule.”
In Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia, traditional language education is being eradicated. In Xinjiang in particular, more than are forced into political “re-education camps,” used for “” compatible with the government’s aim to promote a universal Chinese culture within its borders.
Many children of detainees are sent to state-run institutions where they are “.”
Should we — as Canadians — be shocked? That’s partly how settler colonialism works: domination has its regional differences, but the broader patterns are mostly the same.
The prime minister hasn’t learned
It seems Trudeau hasn’t learned as much as he should have from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Because here we are, with a prime minister who refuses to take a political stance against what is happening in China.
His approach, which borders on disinterest, diminishes .
Following Chinese UN representative Jiang Duan’s condemnation of Canada’s human rights record at the UN, :
“In Canada, we had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Where is China’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission?”
Although Trudeau did appear to see the parallels between China and Canada, and Canada’s quest for truth and reconciliation, he still stopped short of withdrawing the nation from the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
The Olympics will undoubtedly draw attention away from the Chinese government’s genocidal policies, permitting the authoritarian regime “” its reputation.
MacIntoshRoss is an assistant professor of Kinesiology at Western University. Janice Forsyth is an associate professor of sociology & director, of Indigenous Studies at Western University.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
