Originally published 2021-03-01.
On 22 February 2021, Canada's House of Commons voted 266 to 0 for a motion stating that China's treatment of the Uighurs, a mostly Muslim people in the north-western region of Xinjiang, amounts to genocide. The motion was non-binding, which means it expressed the view of Parliament without obliging the government to act. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and nearly all of his cabinet abstained.
The vote made Canada's Parliament one of the first legislatures in the world to use the word genocide about Xinjiang. Below is what the motion said, why the government held back, how China responded and what the evidence and later international findings show.
What the motion said and who backed it
The motion was brought by the opposition Conservative Party. It asked the House to recognise that China's policies towards the Uighurs met the definition of genocide set out in the 1948 Genocide Convention. Shortly before the vote, it was amended to urge the International Olympic Committee to move the 2022 Winter Olympics out of Beijing if the treatment continued.
Many backbench members of Trudeau's own Liberal Party voted in favour, along with the Bloc Québécois, the New Democrats and the Greens. No member voted against it.
Conservative leader Erin O'Toole presented the vote as a test of principle over trade. He told reporters that "there's a genocide happening" and argued that Canadian values were not for sale, even at an economic cost.
Why Trudeau's cabinet abstained
The government's caution had several reasons. Ministers argued that a formal finding of genocide should rest on an independent international investigation rather than a parliamentary vote. Relations with Beijing were also unusually delicate.
In December 2018 Canada had arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of the United States. Days later China detained two Canadians, former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, and accused them of spying. Critics in Canada called this hostage diplomacy. Both men were still in Chinese custody at the time of the vote; they were released in September 2021, on the same day Meng was allowed to return to China.
Abstaining let the cabinet avoid opposing a popular motion while keeping the government's own position open.
Who else has used the word genocide
The Canadian vote did not come out of nowhere. On 19 January 2021, the last full day of the Trump administration, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo formally determined that China was committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. The incoming Biden administration kept that position.
Other parliaments soon followed Canada. The Dutch parliament passed a similar motion days later, and on 22 April 2021 the UK House of Commons approved a non-binding motion declaring that the Uighurs were suffering genocide. Earlier that year the UK government had narrowly defeated an amendment to its Trade Bill that would have let the High Court rule on whether a trading partner was committing genocide, arguing that this was a question for international courts.
What is happening in Xinjiang
About 10 million people speak the Uighur language, most of them in Xinjiang. Since around 2017, researchers, journalists and human rights groups have documented a vast network of detention facilities in the region.
- Mass detention: Amnesty International estimates about one million Muslims have been held in camps and prisons. Researcher Adrian Zenz put the figure at up to 1.8 million in 2020. Estimates vary because China does not allow independent access.
- Treatment in custody: Amnesty's research, based on hundreds of interviews, satellite images and official Chinese documents, describes beatings, solitary confinement, food deprivation and pressure to abandon religious practice. People were reportedly detained for things such as travelling abroad, using WhatsApp or wearing religious clothing.
- Birth rates: Official Chinese statistics show birth rates in the Uighur-majority areas of Hotan and Kashgar fell by more than 60% between 2015 and 2018, far faster than the national decline. An Associated Press investigation in 2020 reported forced IUD fittings, sterilisations and abortions among minority women.
The birth-rate evidence matters legally, because the Genocide Convention lists "imposing measures intended to prevent births" within a group as one of the acts that can constitute genocide when carried out with intent to destroy that group in whole or in part.
China's response
China rejects all of these accusations. It first denied the camps existed, then described them as voluntary vocational education and training centres meant to counter extremism. Xinjiang officials attribute falling birth rates to family planning policy.
Just before the Canadian vote, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the UN Human Rights Council that there was no genocide in Xinjiang and that "the door to Xinjiang is always open", inviting the UN human rights chief to visit. After the vote, China's foreign ministry said the motion disregarded facts and common sense and that it had lodged stern protests, and its ambassador in Ottawa said there was no genocide.
What the UN later found
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights did visit China in May 2022, under tight restrictions. In August 2022 the UN human rights office published its assessment. It did not use the word genocide, but it concluded that the arbitrary and discriminatory detention of Uighurs and other Muslims may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity. China rejected the report.
That distinction is worth understanding. Genocide requires proof of intent to destroy a group, which is a very high legal bar. Crimes against humanity cover widespread or systematic attacks on civilians, such as mass imprisonment, torture and persecution, without that specific intent. Parliaments that use the word genocide are making a political judgment; a binding legal finding would require a court.
Why a symbolic vote still matters
A non-binding motion changes no law on its own. Its weight lies in what follows: pressure for sanctions, import bans on goods made with forced labour and diplomatic coordination with allies. In March 2021, a month after the vote, Canada joined the US, the UK and the EU in imposing sanctions on Chinese officials over Xinjiang, and China answered with sanctions of its own.
For Uighurs in Canada and abroad, many of whom have relatives they cannot contact, the unanimous vote was also a public acknowledgement that their accounts had been heard.
Sources: Al Jazeera, 23 February 2021; Amnesty International UK: China's Uighur Muslims; Wikipedia: Uyghur genocide; original reporting by The Guardian.
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