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Canada to attend Olympics opening

2008-04-04T09:25:00.000-07:00

Harper says he's not planning on going, urges Beijing to respect rights, peaceful protests

Apr 04, 2008 04:30 AM

Allan Woods
Ottawa Bureau

BUCHAREST–Canada still plans to send a "high-level" government official to the opening ceremonies of this summer's Beijing Olympics, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says.

Harper said yesterday his cabinet has not discussed whether Canada should deliver an official rebuke over China's violent crackdown on protesters in Tibet. He said he never planned to go to Beijing himself for the ceremonies "but we are still planning to have high-level government representation."

Polish and German leaders and Britain's Prince Charles have said they will not attend the opening ceremonies while Hollywood director Steven Spielberg pulled out of the organization of the ceremony some time ago. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has also mused about missing the event.

"My advice – and I know the government of China is not typically taking my advice – my strong advice would be to take these concerns seriously because I think they are likely to grow rather than diminish if we see a repetition of the current pattern," Harper said.

According to Tibetan exiles, more than 100 people have been killed in the military crackdown in Lhasa, the capital, including Buddhist monks and activists who want an end to the Chinese annexation of Tibet. Chinese officials have put the death toll at 22.

Protesters have disrupted the Olympic torch runs in Greece and other countries as it makes its way to Beijing for the summer games. A number of socially conscious athletes are also considering how to express their disagreement with China's Tibet policy while still participating in the contest.

"I would urge China ... to respect human rights and peaceful protests, not just in Tibet but everywhere," Harper said. "I would also encourage the government of China to understand that its growing wealth, its growing importance in the world, and of course the profile of the Olympics will put a greater and greater spotlight on its record in this regard."

Harper made headlines in 2006 for taking a firm line on China's human rights record, saying he would not "sell out" basic democratic principles for fear of hampering trade ties with the economic giant.

Canada's highest profile beef with Beijing is the detention of Huseyin Celil, an ethnic Uighur with Canadian citizenship, on charges of terrorism. He was arrested in Uzbekistan in 2006 and deported to China, where the government refuses to recognize his dual citizenship.

Ottawa presses China for location of jailed Canadian

2008-04-04T09:21:00.000-07:00

OMAR EL AKKAD

March 29, 2008

OTTAWA -- Canadian officials called the Chinese ambassador yesterday to ask that Beijing tell Huseyin Celil's family where the imprisoned Canadian is being held, the Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed.

According to a prepared statement read to The Globe and Mail by a Foreign Affairs spokesman, Chinese Ambassador Lu Shumin was called into the department yesterday to discuss Mr. Celil's situation, which has turned even bleaker in the past few months.

The ambassador was also asked to allow Mr. Celil's family to visit him wherever he is being held, "if only on humanitarian grounds."

Those may well be the only grounds on which Ottawa can appeal, given that Beijing has always refused to recognize any rights he has as a Canadian citizen.

It was revealed this week that Mr. Celil - who was arrested in Uzbekistan two years ago, transferred to China, accused of being a terrorist and sentenced to life in prison - has been moved from the Northwest China prison where he was serving his sentence.

Chinese authorities, who consider Mr. Celil Chinese, have refused to tell his family or Canadian officials where he is.

According to the Foreign Affairs spokesman, officials with the Canadian embassy will soon make the same plea in Beijing.

However, Chinese officials recently expressed displeasure with Ottawa's position on the uprising and repression of protesters in Tibet. With the Olympics just a few months away, the Tibet protests have put Chinese human rights in the spotlight.

The Conservative government has repeatedly acted on behalf of Mr. Celil, a member of the Muslim Uyghur minority in China, since his arrest. But the results have been minimal: In violation of international agreements, Beijing has denied Canadian officials access to Mr. Celil.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister's office called Chris MacLeod, Mr. Celil's Canadian lawyer, to discuss the case. Mr. MacLeod said officials seemed engaged in the issue, and listened to his thoughts on what should be done next.

Family of Canadian serving life in prison in China say his whereabouts unknown

2008-04-04T09:19:00.000-07:00

OTTAWA — The family of a Canadian convicted of terror charges and serving life in prison in China say Beijing has refused to tell Ottawa the prisoner’s whereabouts.
The Globe and Mail reports that the family of Huseyin Celil, along with his Canadian lawyer and Amnesty International, sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Thursday, pleading for the government to intensify efforts on his behalf.
Celil, a member of the Muslim Uyghur minority in China, was travelling on a Canadian passport when he was arrested in Uzbekistan two years ago.
Chinese authorities accused him of terrorism and charged him with engaging in violent separatist activities. Celil has denied the charges.
In April of last year Celil was sentenced to life in prison. According to the letter, Beijing has refused to grant Canadian officials access to him.
The Globe says Celil’s sister visited him just a few months ago in a prison in northwest China. However, Thursday’s letter says the family tried to visit him again on March 7, but were told he was no longer at the prison.

China remains silent on Burlington man's welfare

2008-04-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

China remains silent on Burlington man's welfare

Officials cut off access to relatives, tell Canada to back off

March 28, 2008

Daniel Nolan
The Hamilton Spectator
(Mar 28, 2008)

China won't tell Canada what has become of a Burlington man in one of its prisons because they say it is none of Canada's business.

The news was communicated to Huseyin Celil's lawyer, Chris MacLeod, yesterday by Ottawa.

It came on the second anniversary of Celil's arrest after family members went to visit him in prison and were told he was not there.

MacLeod believes Celil is collateral in the crackdown in Tibet and China has decided "no one is going to talk to him, including his family."

The news has further upset his family, MacLeod says, including wife Kamila Telendibaeva.

"She's getting really strained and it's starting to take its toll, especially now where we don't know where he is," MacLeod said. "At least before, we knew where he was -- we just couldn't get him out."

Amnesty International sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the anniversary, reiterating a plea to appoint a high-level envoy to secure his release.

Celil became a Canadian in 2005 but China does not recognize his Canadian citizenship and has refused access to him in Bajiahu prison in northwest China. He is serving a life sentence for what family and friends say are trumped-up terrorism-related charges stemming from his work for his native Uyghurs in the 1990s.

MacLeod said Celil's mother and sister, who live in China, went to visit him in prison March 7 and 8. They were told he was not there and to return in three months.

They notified Canada's embassy in Beijing, which sent a note to China asking where he is and when his family can visit. MacLeod said the reply was, "We're not going to tell you anything. He's a Chinese citizen."

Foreign Affairs and Chinese Embassy officials could not be reached for comment.

Amnesty International's letter

dnolan@thespec.com

905-526-3351

Family seeks whereabouts of jailed Chinese-Canadian activist

2008-04-04T09:12:00.000-07:00

Human rights activists and family of Huseyin Celil are calling on Ottawa to put more pressure on China to reveal where the 38-year-old Canadian citizen is being imprisoned.

Celil, a Muslim and member of China’s Uighur minority group, was sentenced to life in prison by a Chinese court last April. A year earlier, he had been arrested in Uzbekistan and extradited to his native China to face terrorism charges.

Celil's whereabouts in the Chinese prison system are unknown to his family and Canadian officials. His southern Ontario-based wife and children have sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper urging him to intensify pressure on Beijing to provide more information.

"Prime Minister, we call on you to renew and fortify Canada's efforts to ensure Mr. Celil's human rights are protected," the letter says.

In the message to Harper, the imprisoned man's family expresses concern that "Canda’s attention to Celil's fate appears to have waned."

The prime minister has raised Celil's case with Chinese authorities at the highest level, telling President Hu Jintao in November of 2006 that "when a Canadian citizen is taken from a third country and imprisoned in China, this is a serious concern to this country."

During a visit to Beijing last April, then foreign minister Peter MacKay sought assurances from Chinese officials that Celil wasn't tortured during his interrogation and imprisonment. Chinese officials told MacKay that the Canadian hadn't been tortured, although his family says that he has been brutally maltreated.

'Deeply disappointed' MacKay

MacKay later told journalists that he expressed his "deep disappointment" about the case to his Chinese counterpart.

China has consistently refused Canadian officials consular access to Celil, who has been a citizen of Canada since 2005 after arriving in the country as a refugee in 2001. China contends that Celil has no right to consular access because, as a dual citizen, he is subject to Chinese laws. However, usually China automatically rescinds citizenship for people who take up nationality in foreign countries.

The case against Celil charged that he had been involved in violent separatist activities against the Chinese state. His friends, family and supporters say he was a human rights activist speaking up on behalf of an oppressed minority.

The Chinese Communist Party government takes the view that activism on behalf of ethnic minorities is often akin to separatism, as in the case of Tibet, as well as the Uighurs of Xingiang province.

There have been several violent attacks in China blamed on Uighur separatist groups, some of whom have ties to international Islamist political movements.

With files from the Canadian Press

Family unable to locate Canadian jailed in China

2008-04-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

Huseyin Celil is seen in this undated family handout photo.

Family unable to locate Canadian jailed in China

Updated Fri. Mar. 28 2008 7:23 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

The family of Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen imprisoned in China, says they have no idea where he's being held.

In a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, sent jointly with Amnesty International, Celil's family is urging the government to do more to ensure his safety.

"Prime minister, we call on you to renew and fortify Canada's efforts to ensure Mr. Celil's human rights are protected," the letter states.

"We appreciated the concern and action demonstrated by the government in the past, including by you personally, but are concerned Canada's attention to Mr. Celil's fate appears to have waned."

CTV's Steve Chao, reporting Friday from Beijing, said the big concern right now surrounds Celil's whereabouts.

"As of last fall, his sister was still being allowed to visit him in a prison but then earlier this month, when she went to the same prison, government authorities told her that he had been moved but they refused to let her know where exactly he had been moved to," said Chao.

Celil, who belongs to the Uighur Muslim minority of far western China, holds Canadian citizenship. The Chinese-born man came to Canada via Uzbekistan and Turkey after escaping from a Chinese jail in 2000.

In late March 2006, Celil visited Uzbekistan and was arrested and returned to China.

Chinese authorities claim that militants among the Uighurs -- Turkic-speaking Muslims -- are backing a violent Islamic separatist movement in an attempt to set up an independent state of "East Turkistan.''

China's line has long been that because Celil was born in China they will not recognize his Canadian citizenship.

"This is against international agreements however the Chinese government says this is their matter... and they do not want Canada involved," said Chao.

In April 2007, a Chinese court found Celil guilty for the two crimes of "separating China and ... organizing, leading and participating in terrorist groups, organizations."

He was given a life sentence for the crimes. In July 2007, a Chinese court rejected Celil's appeal.

Celil's family says he is being held in jail because he is a human rights activist.

Canadian diplomats have never been granted access to Celil, said Chao.

Comments are now closed for this story

James
Another example of China's total disregard for human rights. This person has Canadian citizenship but China does not respect this. He was acting on behalf of a repressed minority group in China… Shame on China! Boycott the Bejing Olympics! Release the Canadian Huseyin Celil!

Mike
To bad we rely so heavily on China for goods.

Ellery
Why was a Chinese citizen who escaped from jail given Canadian citizenship in the first place? I am not in favor of spending any taxpayer money to try to help people like this.

DaveB
We continue to support this communist regime because of our greed for the cheap manufactured goods. Our manufacturing sectors are collapsing and they are gobbling up world resources, polluting the world as they go. Human rights have no place in their philosophy and their population continues to be impoverished, when will the west wake up to what is happening?

James
Ellery, I would venture to say that Mr. Celil was imprisoned in China for speaking up for the human rights of his repressed minority group. Canda has a habit of supporting people who are being persecuted by repressive governments. At least Canada tries to practice basic human rights. Shame on China! Boycott the Bejing Olympices. Free Mr Celil!

Jim
Presumably, he was a political prisoner. Be that as it may, he was granted citizenship so Canada should stand by him.

Alan in Vancouver
How many times do we need to know about China's communist totalitarian government's human rights abuses, before we finally have the fortitude to take reprisals.
The Olympic games boycott and trade sanctions are a good start.
Mr. Harper, where are you?

Chris
Seriously? So is the family of every person who is jailed outside of Canada going to go to the media and the government about it? These ventures are just huge wastes of taxpayer money and need to stop!

Sharp
This is one more story to show that our taxpayers are supporting what kind of business the government is doing. But this is not a news. We all knew he was a Chinese before he became a Canadian.

Bettina
I am sick and tired of having to "rescue" people that freely go to these crazy countries expecting to be treated like in Canada. Stay at home and don't travel, especially when you are a wanted man. It's if we have to spend millions on saving these folks and I say too bad. Stay at home if your want freedom. ANd another thing, stop trying to change the world. Countries are the way they are and let them be. I am sick of trying to save the world from poverty and oppression. It's time we focused on Canada and spend less time with trying to change other countries.

Dean
Why are we trying to "save" convenient Canadians? We shouldn't be jumping in where these criminals are every time they call for help. I agree with those who say to stop trying to change the world. Do we want other nations telling us how to behave or run our country? How about we respect the laws of other nations as we want them to respect ours?

mdm
Wow. Has the day actually come where more people are concerned about their money as 'taxpayers' than about the life and rights of other human beings? I really hope not, but I fear it might be the case. What sad times we are in. I grew up in a Canada that was much more understanding and compassionate that what it seems to be today. Call me a bleeding heart liberal if you must, but I'd like to think at least I have a heart.

Sean
I will never work trying to apply Canada's Law in China. So try Chinese Law in China, it might help.

Anne
Although I agree he showed poor judgement in going back, I don't think we should just leave him there to rot in a chinese prison.

Matt
My understanding of the timeline is.
1. A Chinese citizen is convicted on terrorism charges.
2. He breaks out of jail and flees to Canada.
3. He is granted Canadian citizenship.
4. China does not recognize his Canadian Citizenship and insists he remains a Chinese citizen.
5. China insists he is an escaped prisoner and must complete his sentence.
6. He travels to a China friendly country and gets arrested.
7. He gets deported back to China to finish his sentence.

Seems open and shut that Canada is interfering with a domestic Chinese law enforcement issue. We as a country must not grant Canadian citizenship as some sort of global get out of jail free card to convicted criminals.

Tamouh
It is shame some people believe we shouldn't help others in time of need. It is the right of every Canadian to be looked after by his country just as it is the obligation of every Canadian to serve the best interest of his country even if abroad. You won't appreciate this concept until you've been yourself kidnapped or persecuted when on another country's soil.

Shawn
I am with Bettina on this one. After escaping the region, Celil travelled back to that region, was arrested and turned over to the Chinese. It amazes me that people don't understand that the due process in other countries is different then Canada and that your 'Rights' (for the most part) don't exist outside of Canada.

The Chinese government can run their country how every they see fit and if we don't like it, we should buy or support anything they do make or do.

Also, the other issue might be that if by international law he is considered a Canadian then the world needs a recognized court that has authority to handle such issues as this. Without a court to uphold the law, the law is meaningless.

Catherine
Nothwithstanding the current situation and in view on China's grip on the world economy and their total disregard for human rights and clean earth -we do have the will to boycott the Olympics AND stop buying Made in China. I know it's difficult but I have been doing it for well over a year. And I am very vocal with retailers who sell Chinese made goods.

Fog of Life
Seems that the majority of these, "Canadian jailed abroad", cases relate to naturalized citizens. Maybe during citizenship ceremonies we should have people understand that the Canadian passport is not bullet proof and provides NO immunity in foreign countries. People seem to know that the Canadian media will take up their cause if something happens so they consciously run the risk. Its time this mentality changes.

Jim
Let's hope China can socially and politically enter the 21st Century (ie rule of law, respect for the individual etc) before she self destructs. Business and wealth creation require political stability and if history is any guide, the Chinese economic miracle of the last 2 decades is unlikely to continue in a country where people simply disappear.

Shamaro
Ok, here we have a guy, who escaped a Chinese prison, came to Canada, attained Canadian Citizenship and even though he know's he's a wanted man in that part of the world goes back, gets arrested and finds himself yet again detained in a Chinese prison. People, regardless of his Canadian Citizenship, he is also a Chinese citizen and in China they do not recognize duel citizenship. We all know that China has total disregard for human rights, so why test the Chinese government on human rights when we all know what the outcome will be. Should the Canadian Government get involved? Well, at least should be talking to the Chinese government about him, but there's really not a hole lot that can be done. Another lesson all Canadians should learn about travelling abroad to certain countries such as China.

alberta view
Capitalism and communism have joined hands in a perfect partnership. Some collateral damage is to be expected. Corporations [eg. olympics inc.] and commies have no regard for human rights. Please include our neo-government under "corporations".

Barrett
I have to agree with Matt, Sean and Dean on this one. Why are we trying to "save" a person charged with a crime in their own country just because they recieved a Canadian Citizenship, (after they escaped from prison?) Where did our system breakdown by letting convicted escaped prisoners into our country- legally! If we were as compassionate for orphans and undereducated children as we are convicted criminals we may just get somewhere eventually

Andrew W
This is getting very old. Our politicians have more important matters to concentrate on than these people who continue to travel into countries where everyone knows questionable human rights exist. It is a hard lesson, but damnit, take your medicine!

Gail
It's time some Canadians stop asking what their country will do for them and instead ask what they can do for their country. Going back to any area where Canadian law has no jurisdiction is simply futile at best. Boycotting the Olympics is punishing the athletes who have done nothing wrong. Until the Chinese people can change their communist leadership, fighting for human rights needs to be done at a safe distance, and through diplomatic means.

Angela
The reason he returned to Uzbekistan was to try to get his remaining three children out of China. I pay a huge amount in taxes every year and I am quite happy to have my tax dollars spent helping a man who is willing to risk his life for his children.

RRBSF
Does anyone out there have even the remotest clue what it takes to govern 1.3 billion people. That's 1300 million compared to our 30 million and the 300 million in the US. Think of the problems of our elections and those in the US and then do the math and also recognise that China has a very diverse population. There is no way we can even imagine the problems of a population that size and think our method of democracy is the only solution. We also do not understand the dangers of allowing dissention within a population that large. I think maybe the people of Canada need to stop judging other governments based on their own standards and recognize that there are other cultures out there with problems we do not have a clue about.

Jeth
We have to worry about our TAXPAYER money because we work hard and pay taxes. We are not paying taxes for the mistakes of other people.

Human right is fine but we should not firght for human rights on expense of other people's hard money(taxes) that is again voilation of Human right.

Government should spend money for we Canadians which are working and contributing to Canadian Economy, not on the people involved in criminal activities of any kind.

Mister Ed
Canada has oil. China wants access to it. As a result, we have considerable diplomatic leverage. We should exploit that to its fullest potential to extract whatever human rights concessions we can, at every opportunity.

James
People, he is a human being, deserving of our compassion. We do not know his life story but we know he is a human being. The Chinese government has a long and horrific history of crushing dissent. Now they seem to think that this ability extends outside of their border. They have become like the American governement; "do as I say or watch out." No government is above the laws protecting human rights. Individuals have the absolute right to live in peace and security above all other considerations, all others. If not, the human race will cease to exist, suppressed by faceless governments and corporations. Shane on China! Boycott the Bejing Olympics! Free Huseyin Celil.

Aimee
I think there is an important issue here that people seem to be missing.

Doesn't his family have the right to know where he is? If he is even still alive?

Should be in jail, shouldnt be in jail, that is a question for the government and law to answer.

I feel sorry for the family members. If I had a loved one in jail (be it for any reason), I would like to know where that loved one was, and if he/she was okay.

China activist jailing criticised

2008-04-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

China's jailing of a prominent rights activist has drawn criticism from an international media advocacy group and the US.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it was "appalled" by Thursday's ruling to jail Hu Jia for three and a half years and called for a boycott of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

"The Chinese justice system has, at the behest of the authorities, thrown oil on the flames just four months ahead of the Olympic Games," the group said in a statement.
Hu, 34, a high-profile rights campaigner well known for criticising the government in internet articles and in interviews with the foreign media,
was jailed for "incitement to subvert state power".

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said on the sidelines of the Nato summit in Romania on Thursday that the decision "is deeply disturbing to the United States".
"It is exactly the kind of decision that we have tried to convince the Chinese is not only not in the interest of human rights, and in the interest of the rule of law, but actually not in China's interest," she said.

RSF also urged the European Union to freeze its rights dialogue with China to protest against the prison sentence.

Calling Hu "a figurehead of the peaceful struggle to improve respect for human rights in China", the RSF said "the list of Olympic Games prisoners is getting longer while the International Olympic Committee remains desperately silent".
"In a sign of protest, we urge the European governments to immediately freeze the constructive dialogue on human rights that has been conducted with China for the past few years," the group said.

Rule of law
A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman said the case "has been dealt with in accordance with law".

"We will not stop the implementation of law because of the Olympic Games," Jiang Yu, the spokeswoman, said.

Hu, who has been involved in civil liberties issues ranging from Aids awareness to environmental rights and Tibet, was found guilty less than two weeks ago and has 10 days to appeal Thursday's sentence.

Last year Hu and activist lawyer Teng Biao authored an article accusing Beijing of failing to fulfil a pledge made when bidding for the Olympics that it would improve human rights.
Another government critic, Yang Chunlin, was jailed five years on similar charges last month.

Canada Brings Up Human Rights Issues With China

2008-04-04T08:25:00.002-07:00

Well good for Stephen Harper for bringing up human rights with the President of China. While the brief meeting sounds like it might've taken place as the two were standing next to each other in the line-up at the APEC conference buffet table, it seems the Chinese are none too pleased with the new style of diplomacy from the Canadians. After 13 years of sycophantic Liberal Prime Ministers prioritizing trade with China way above demanding action to improve human rights there's finally a government in Ottawa which is serious about highlighting China's brutal record with its own people.

Source : http://mackaycartoons.blogdrive.com

Canada Brings Up Human Rights Issues With China

2008-04-04T08:25:00.001-07:00

Canada Brings Up Human Rights Issues With China

2008-04-04T08:25:00.000-07:00

Tortured Abroad? Forgotten At Home?

2008-02-29T09:43:00.001-08:00

Feb 29, 2008 04:30 AM

Alex Neve
Chris MacLeod
Lorne Waldman

In three different corners of the world – China, Egypt and Ethiopia – three Canadian citizens languish in prison. Each has very likely been tortured. Each is at very real risk of being tortured again. None faces any prospect of gaining their freedom soon. All seem to have been forgotten. Each deserves more from their government.

Huseyin Celil has been in prison in China since the end of June 2006. His wife and four children in Burlington have endured anxious fear for his safety ever since. Celil is an ethnic Uighur. In the far western reaches of China a decades-old campaign of brutal repression against the Uighur people has intensified in recent years. Torture, unjust imprisonment and other abuses abound. Celil thought he had escaped to safety. But he was surreptitiously arrested and sent back to China while visiting with his wife's family in nearby Uzbekistan. He has known nothing but injustice ever since. Last year, after a blatantly unfair trial, he was sentenced to a life term in prison. He believes that the Uighur people's rights should be respected. He has been convicted of being a "splitist", a Chinese government euphemism for terrorist.

In Egypt it is Mohamed el-Attar. El-Attar was arrested in Egypt on Jan. 1, 2007. He was charged with being a spy for Israel and in April was sentenced to a 15-year prison term. In open court during his trial he professed his innocence and insisted he had only confessed after being tortured with electric shocks and forced to drink his urine. Notably, El-Attar is gay and he has converted to Christianity. Gay men and Christians are often on the receiving end of human rights abuse in Egypt. Recent media raises worrying concerns about his current health and state of mind.

Bashir Makhtal has been imprisoned in Ethiopia for a year, but his exact whereabouts and fate are unknown. He was arrested at the Kenya-Somalia border and then, while awaiting legal proceedings in Kenya was suddenly and secretly flown to Somalia and then on to Ethiopia where he has disappeared into prison. He has had no legal representation. It appears that he has been brought before a military court, but his family has been given no news of why that was or what the result has been. Prisoners held in secretive detention are particularly vulnerable to torture and abuse, be it in Ethiopia or anywhere. His crime? No one knows. He has been an outspoken supporter of his ethnic group, the beleaguered Ogaden people of Ethiopia. Like the Uighurs in China, the Ogaden people have suffered decades of relentless persecution in Ethiopia.

These cases are ugly reminders of very serious global human rights concerns, including torture, the rights of minorities, unfair trials, impunity, religious discrimination, and persecution on grounds of sexual orientation. Each starkly underscores that these far-off tragedies can and do play out very close to home.

We have been down this road many times in recent years. Several of the cases are well-known to Canadians such as Maher Arar and William Sampson, tortured in Syria and Saudi Arabia, and Zahra Kazemi, tortured to death in Iran. A judicial inquiry is currently looking into the torture of three other Canadians, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El-Maati and Muayyed Nureddin, in Syria and Egypt.

Of course it is beyond Canada's power or ability to ensure that Canadians will be protected from abuses of this sort. There are simply still too many lawless corners of our world when it comes to human rights. That said, what faces these three men now is in large part a legacy of long-standing international failure to craft a global human rights order in which countries like China, Egypt and Ethiopia would face meaningful and concerted pressure from other states, including Canada, to adopt the long-needed reforms that would eradicate torture, combat discrimination and improve the quality of justice.

But even in that very imperfect world surely Canada must do anything and everything possible to protect Canadians who end up ensnared in situations of grave injustice. A key message that emerged from the public inquiry into Maher Arar's case is that the government's response to cases of Canadian citizens at risk of torture abroad has often been inadequate. Among other recommendations, Justice Dennis O'Connor, who headed that inquiry, urged that when torture is on the line, the Minister of Foreign Affairs should personally play a central role in guiding Canada's response. He stressed that there must be as much transparency and political accountability as possible in such cases.

There was a period of intense government interest in Celil's case, but that appears to have faded since his conviction. It is difficult to ascertain how active the government has been on behalf of Makhtal or El-Attar. The Egyptian lawyer who represented El-Attar at his trial worries that El-Attar has been abandoned by Canadian officials. Makhtal's family in Canada has not been able to meet with any senior Canadian government officials.

While it came far too late, in Maher Arar's case a prime ministerial envoy was eventually dispatched to Syria. Canada's Foreign Minister took up his case with his Syrian counterpart and with the head of the Arab League. Those efforts undoubtedly helped secure Arar's release.

It is time for serious and high-profile government action on these cases. There is very real reason to believe that these three men have all been tortured abroad. They must not be forgotten at home.

Alex Neve is secretary general of Amnesty International Canada. Chris MacLeod is a lawyer representing Huseyin Celil, and Lorne Waldman is a lawyer for Bashir Makhtal.

In surprise move, China lets Celil meet sister

2008-01-04T22:25:00.000-08:00

LIFE SENTENCE

In surprise move, China lets Celil meet sister

Imprisoned Canadian complained of lack of medical attention, Uyghur-Canadian group leader says

OMAR EL AKKAD

January 4, 2008

In a rare event, Canadian citizen Huseyin Celil was allowed to meet one of his family members last week, as he continues to serve a life sentence in China.

One of Mr. Celil's sisters, Meryem, met with the imprisoned Canadian for about 20 minutes, according to Mehmet Tohti, head of the Uyghur Canadian Association. It was the first time he had talked to his sister in 13 years, Mr. Tohti said. Mr. Celil was arrested in Uzbekistan and handed over to China in 2006. He was travelling on a Canadian passport at the time.

Chinese authorities accused him of terrorism and charged him with engaging in violent separatist activities. In April, he was sentenced to life in prison. In violation of international agreements, Beijing has refused to grant Canadian officials access to him.

The Canadian's story garnered international headlines last year, but Mr. Celil has largely disappeared from the news media spotlight since he began serving his life sentence.

In his meeting with his sister, he complained of persistent kidney problems, for which he has received no medical attention, Mr. Tohti said.

Mr. Celil is currently serving his life sentence in Bajiahu prison in northwest China. The prison has long been used to hold those accused by Chinese officials of separatist activities, especially members of the Muslim Uyghur minority.

Mr. Celil also revealed to his sister that his lawyer in Beijing has about 30 pages of first-hand testimony that the prisoner was not allowed to present during his Chinese court hearing, Mr. Tohti said.

The testimony would represent the first time Mr. Celil has given his side of the story since his imprisonment in Uzbekistan and subsequent deportation to China.

In his meeting last week, he asked that the testimony be transferred from his Beijing lawyer, who has essentially exhausted all Mr. Celil's legal avenues in China, to Canadian embassy officials.

Mr. Celil also asked his sister to plead with Canadian officials to arrange a phone call between the prisoner and his wife in Burlington, Ont., Mr. Tohti said. Mr. Celil has not seen or spoken to his wife since he was arrested.

Help Canadians detained abroad

2007-11-08T19:51:00.000-08:00

Nov 06, 2007 04:30 AM

MohamedO Hassan

In a nation like Canada with so many communities from every corner of the world, it is not unusual for some of our citizens to find themselves caught in the global terror-fighting dragnet.

Some Canadians, such as myself, hail from the very places that today are theatres of operations in the war on terror: Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Lebanon. Others, who were born here, may share a common name or culture with those perceived to be targets of the global-war-on-terror machinery.

Yet when a Canadian citizen is detained by any authority – be it one with a dubious human rights record such as Ethiopia or one with a superficially stellar one like the United States under the current administration – it is disheartening not to have any public debate on the treatment of our citizens. All we hear are allegations and innuendo from anonymous Canadian security intelligence officers.

There appears to be no coherent public policy on how to deal with those who detain or render to a third country our citizens under the pretext of the war on terror. Worse, there has been no visible concerted Canadian effort to demand timely consular access to Canadians detained abroad.

If there were such a policy and concerted Canadian effort, Maher Arar probably would not have been deported to Syria by the U.S. in 2002; Huseyin Celil would not have been rendered by Uzbekistan in 2006 and put on a sham terror trial in China while our government pontificated through the press; and Bashir Makhtal would not have been held in an Ethiopian prison since January with no Canadian consular access, let alone help from our "new" government.

Contrary to our laws and public pronouncements from the Department of Foreign Affairs, it appears there is a presumption of guilt until our detained citizens prove their innocence. How else can any sane person explain the continued detention of Makhtal, who is not even listed in the official records of the very prison where he has been held for the past 10 months?

If Addis Ababa thinks Makhtal is guilty of something, why is Canada not able to prevail on Ethiopia, a nation that receives our development aid, to go ahead and prosecute him rather that allowing the Ethiopian authorities to keep him in indefinite detention?

Blaming the plight of Arar on the former Liberal government while doing very little to help detained Canadians like Makhtal and Celil is neither acceptable nor is it an option. Canada needs to come up with a coherent policy that calls those who render our citizens to account and puts all of our resources at the service of the detained. And no matter which policy we want to adopt as a nation when it comes to the detention and treatment of our citizens abroad, it is paramount that we have public discussions beforehand.

Rather than allowing our intelligence community to determine the discourse for the plight of rendered and detained Canadians through allegations possibly supplied by the very governments that are holding our citizens, it is necessary to establish a policy that upholds the rights of all Canadians.

The media should take an active role in educating the general public about the difficulty our citizens can find themselves in abroad or even inside Canada in the context of the war on terror. The public should not feel indifferent to the predicament of our fellow citizens.

In previous years it was William Sampson and Arar who found themselves detained abroad. Today it is Celil and Makhtal, and perhaps others whose names might not yet have graced the front pages of our newspapers, who are in detention and receiving very little help from the Canadian government.

NEWS CONFERENCE IN OTTOWA APR 26

2007-04-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

PRESS

Kamila Telendibaeva, the wife of Huseyin Celil, listens during a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa April 26, 2007. China jailed Celil, a Uighur-Canadian, for life last week for separatism and terrorism and warned Canada not to get involved even as Ottawa said it would send its foreign minister to discuss the case. REUTERS/Chris Wattie (CANADA)

Reuters via Yahoo! News - Apr 26 1:49 PM

Kamila Telendibaeva, wife of Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen being held in a prison and serving a life sentence in a Chinese prison holds a news conference on behalf her husband, Thursday April 26, 2007 in Ottawa, Canada. Canada has no right to interfere in the case of a Canadian Muslim activist sentenced this month to life in prison in China for alleged terror links, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Thursday. (AP Photo/CP, Fred Chartrand)

AP via Yahoo! News - Apr 26 11:30 AM

A spokesman for Canadian Foreign Affairs Minster Peter MacKay, seen here in 2006, said it would closely scrutinize the case of Huseyin Celil, a Canadian national sentenced in China to life in prison on terrorism and separatism charges.(AFP/File/Karen Bleier)

AFP/File via Yahoo! News - Apr 19 8:40 AM

MacKay to raise Celil's case in Beijing

2007-04-29T08:56:00.000-07:00

Last Updated: Sunday, April 29, 2007 | 8:48 AM ET

CBC News

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay says now is the "ideal time" for Canada and China to renew discussions on "a whole range of issues," including the case of jailed human rights activist Huseyin Celil.

MacKay, who arrived in Beijing on Sunday for a three-day visit, says he will raise Celil's case when he meets with China's new foreign minister on Monday.

Huseyin Celil is is shown with one of his children in a family photo.
(CBC)

Celil is a Canadian who was sentenced to life in prison in China last week on a number of charges, including participating in a terrorist group.

China does not recognized Celil's Canadian citizenship, but MacKay said on Sunday that Canada "remains very committed" to him and "in particular in maintaining his Canadian citizenship."

MacKay is also expected to discuss with Chinese officials commercial ties and climate change during his visit.

On April 26, his wife, Kamila Telendibaeva, held a news conference in Ottawa to urge the government to appoint a special envoy to try to win her husband's release.

Telendibaeva has been raising the couple's four children by herself for the last year at their home in Burlington, Ont.

Celil, who is originally from China, was arrested in Uzbekistan in March 2006 while visiting his wife's relatives, and was extradited to China on terrorism charges.

Earlier this month, a Chinese court found him guilty of giving money to the founder of a terrorist organization called Hezbollah in China's Guangdong province in 1997. The founder went on to purchase arms and train terrorists, the court said.

Celil, 38, denies the charges and says there was no evidence brought against him.

He came to Canada as a refugee in 2001 and in 2005 became a Canadian citizen. He fled China after being imprisoned for his ties to the Uighur ethnic minority, a Muslim group that has long claimed repression at the hands of the Chinese government.

Help free activist, Ottawa urged

2007-04-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

Rights group, wife ask MacKay to act

Apr 27, 2007 04:30 AM

OTTAWA–The wife of Huseyin Celil, a Canadian human-rights activist jailed for life in China, is asking the federal government to do more to free him.

Kamila Telendibaeva yesterday urged Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay to raise her husband's case when he visits China next week – something MacKay has said he will do.

Telendibaeva joined with Amnesty International to also urge Canada to name a special envoy to lead and co-ordinate efforts to free the 37-year-old Celil.

Celil, a Muslim whose wife and four children live in Burlington, grew up in China but escaped to Canada in 2001 and became a citizen. He was arrested in Uzbekistan last year and deported to China where he was convicted of having terrorist links.

The Chinese foreign ministry, meantime, said Canada has no right to interfere in the case.

"It has no connection with Canada. We hope the Canadian side will not interfere with China's internal affairs under this pretext," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Liu Jianchao in Beijing.

Canadian Press, AP and AFP

China and Canada: A year of frosty relations

2007-04-29T08:52:00.000-07:00

Updated Sat. Apr. 28 2007 7:10 AM ET

Mary Nersessian, CTV.ca News

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay embarks this week on his long-anticipated first-ever trip to China, a visit that could spell failure or fortune for bilateral relations.

Observers say MacKay is walking a fine line with China that could prove disastrous if he falters.

On one hand, the economic giant offers robust business prospects. On the other, China has warned renewed criticism could erode trust between the nations, and hurt trade relations.

The Tories are under mounting pressure to mend frayed relations with China, which began to unravel last year.

"It's extremely important that Peter Mackay is making this trip at this time, I think it signals something of a warmer approach by Ottawa," Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada Co-CEO Paul Evans told CTV.ca in a telephone interview from Vancouver.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to reject an invitation to visit Beijing and decline to send any senior ministers until later in the year was perceived as an affront, one that set the tone for a year of frosty relations.

MacKay left for his trip on Wednesday, heading first to Europe, where he will meet with NATO foreign ministers. He visits China April 29 to May 1.

MacKay is slated to "set priorities for productive co-operation between Canada and China" according to a press release issued from the Foreign Affairs department.

Human rights, commercial relations and broader issues, such as global warming, are also likely to be on the table for talks, Evans suspects.

But to him, "more important the content of the discussions is going to be that opportunity to build a relationship and to get a feel for the pace and dynamism of contemporary China," he said.

The foreign affairs minister is also to discuss the contentious case of Huseyin Celil, a Canadian Muslim activist recently sentenced to life in prison for alleged terror links.

Canada has been aggressively lobbying for his release, and his case is just one of a number of irritants in Canada-China relations since the Tories took power in January.

York University professor emeritus Bernie Frolic, a leading expert on Canada's relations with China, says the Conservative government's agenda has been to focus on human rights, a strategy that may have misfired.

"In the process of doing this, other parts of our relationship seem have to been somewhat neglected by the present government," he told CTV.ca.

Consequently, the focus on human rights has "resulted in a poor working relationship with the top levels of the Chinese state," said Frolic, who is writing a book on Canadian-Chinese relations.

"The point is that our prime minister hasn't gone to China, and none of our senior ministers went. Now, finally, our foreign affairs minister is going, and that's important because at last we're coming out of this dark age where everything was put on hold," he said.

MacKay is tasked with the duty of telling his Chinese counterparts that Canada won't stand for human rights infringement. But at the same time, he must remind the Chinese of their relationship with Canadians, Frolic said.

"We've got energy and raw materials that China wants, China has manufactured goods that we want -- we want to try to figure out how China can invest more in Canadian economy," Frolic said.

"We need to find a way to discuss this in a way that is not confrontational and remind them we've had a very good working relationship since 1970 and get it back on the right track. We can't ignore China," he said.

CTV.ca tracks the rocky relationship between China and Canada.

April 2006

The federal government is "concerned" that Chinese spies are stealing Canada's industrial and high-technology secrets, MacKay tells CTV.

In an exclusive interview with CTV later that month, China's ambassador to Canada Ambassador rejects claims that Chinese spies are stealing Canada's industrial and high-tech secrets.

Also that month, a decision to allow Chinese political dissident Lu Decheng to emigrate to Canada raises tensions between Beijing and Ottawa.

China imprisoned Lu for nine years after he defaced a portrait of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square with paint.

July 2006

The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa dismisses a report by two prominent Canadian investigators that claims China has harvested the organs of Falun Gong prisoners.

Later that month, China complains to the Canadian government about its decision to bestow honorary citizenship on the Dalai Lama, saying the gesture could harm relations.

An official with the Chinese embassy in Ottawa says Beijing has voiced its disapproval to the prime minister, and demands that Ottawa continues to recognize Tibet as a part of China.

November 2006

Harper and Chinese officials trades jabs prior to a meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation summit.

"I think Canadians want us to promote our trade relations worldwide, and we do that, but I don't think Canadians want us to sell out important Canadian values -- our belief in democracy, freedom, human rights,'' Harper says. "They don't want us to sell that out to the almighty dollar.''

Harper makes the contentious remarks after the Chinese government abruptly cancels a private meeting between himself and China's President Hu Jintao.

The rhetoric from the Canadian prime minister prompts a Chinese backlash and a storm of protest from Canadian industries with interests in China.

January 2007

During a high-profile visit to China, International Trade Minister David Emerson signs two agreements with China

The first is a Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement that will boost collaborative research and development activities between the two countries in both the private and public sectors.

The second initiative is a signed Memorandum of Understanding that will open the door to co-operation on trade gateways and corridors between Canada and China.

February 2007

Tensions mount when Celil appears at the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court in Xinjiang's capital without a Canadian diplomat present, which violates his right as a Canadian citizen.

April 2007

Ahead of his trip to Beijing, MacKay argues that Ottawa can push its human rights agenda "with tact" while working on renewing the business relationship with China.

"I agree that the relationship with China needs some nurturing, as it would with any large, complex, multi-faceted relationship ...," MacKay tells The Globe and Mail.

Also in April, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issues a warning that Canada has no right to interfere in the case Celil.

"We believe the case is China's internal affair and in essence relates to anti-terrorism,'' says Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao at a regular news briefing. "It has no connection with Canada. We hope the Canadian side will not interfere with China's internal affairs under this pretext.''

'Send my husband home,' Celil's wife pleads

2007-04-29T08:38:00.002-07:00

Ottawa should dispatch a special envoy to China to argue for imprisoned Canadian's release, spouse says

JEFF SALLOT

OTTAWA -- The wife of jailed human-rights activist Huseyin Celil urged the federal government yesterday to appoint a special envoy to try to win the Canadian man's release from a Chinese prison.

"I'm so worried. I feel for him," Kamila Telendibaeva said, describing concerns for her husband's safety after reports he may have been tortured.

At a news conference on Parliament Hill, Ms. Telendibaeva also appealed to Beijing to release Mr. Celil to Canada when Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay meets with Chinese officials next week.

"Send my husband home to me and our children," she said.

Print Edition - Section Front

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Why Celil doesn't stand a chance

2007-04-29T08:38:00.001-07:00

By J. Michael Cole

Friday, Apr 27, 2007, Page 8

`Just as the promise of access to the Chinese market has allowed China to almost completely isolate Taiwan and Tibet, its attraction will ensure that rhetorical jousting aside, nothing will change and Celil, sadly, will not receive the assistance he is entitled to as a Canadian citizen.'

Huseyin Celil, a 38-year-old Chinese-born ethnic Uighur who fled to Canada in 2001 and then obtained Canadian citizenship in 2005, was sentenced on April 19 by a Chinese court to life imprisonment for the crimes of "separating China and ... organizing, leading and participating in terrorist groups [or] organizations."

Celil was first arrested in Uzbekistan and thence spirited to China, where he had been imprisoned for the past year before receiving his sentence.

Given that Celil has Canadian citizenship and in light of the Canadian government's awarding earlier this year of generous financial compensation to Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian origin who in 2002 was deported from the US to Syria, where he was allegedly tortured, Celil's family would perhaps be right to hope that Ottawa will do its utmost to come to his assistance. After all, although it came ex post facto and after years of denial, Canadian authorities did come clean on the Arar case, setting a precedent in the international campaign against terrorism which aside from the awarding of reparations worth approximately US$10 million to Arar and an admission of guilt on the role government agencies played in his deportation, forced the chief of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police -- Canada's equivalent of the FBI, loosely put -- to step down.

Sadly for Celil and precedent notwithstanding, he is unlikely to receive much help from Ottawa -- or the rest of the international community, for that matter. And the reason is simple: China.

It is one thing for Canada to reprimand Syria on human rights for the very real possibility that individuals in its prison system are being badly treated, if not tortured. In fact, by launching a commission of inquiry into the matter of Arar's deportation and later on admitting that he had been wronged, Ottawa had chosen to side with one of its citizens not only against Syria but the US as well, which to this day refuses to grant him a chance to make his case in a US court and will not remove him from its long list of terror suspects. There is real cause for hope when a country goes to this length to defend one of its own, especially in the context of the campaign against terrorism and the inherent pressure from the US upon states to participate in the effort.

But hapless Celil has a tremendous handicap: China's economy and the lure it has, siren-song-like, on other countries. Statistics from Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada show that Canada's total trade with China last year was close to C$42 billion (US$37.3 billion), while two-way trade with Syria for the same period was approximately C$72 million. China's GDP was estimated at US$2.225 trillion in 2005. Syria's was US$25.84 billion.

Given these statistics, as former Los Angeles Times Beijing bureau chief James Mann points out in his book The China Fantasy, in recent years states have refrained from saying, let alone doing, anything "provocative" that is likely to "anger" Beijing, as doing so could have implications on trade. Given the size of the Chinese market and its vaunted potential for growth, Canada is not immune to this pressure and despite its envious, albeit imperfect, human rights track record, it, too, allows money to trump human rights. It is one thing to "anger" Damascus and put bilateral trade at risk; it is quite another when it comes to China.

All of this means that Canadian authorities will likely limit themselves to the usual mild criticism, meant for domestic consumption, of China's detention of Celil. Following news of his life sentence, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he had "raised the issue" with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay, who will be visiting China on Sunday, said he would press the issue with Beijing.

Anyone remotely aware of China's human rights track record knows how effective "raising issues" with Beijing has been when it comes to the numerous dissidents it has locked up in its prisons.

This empty rhetoric, which reached its peak level when, in February, Harper said of the Celil matter: "I would point out to any Chinese official that just as a matter of fact, China had a huge trade surplus with this country, so it would be in the interest of the Chinese government to make sure any dealings on trade are fair and above board," will avail to nothing if it is not supported by concrete action -- sanctions, embassy recalls and the like -- as mere words are immediately met by Chinese officials telling foreign governments not to meddle in its "domestic affairs" and that insistence can only "strain relations" -- a song unfortunately repeated ad nauseum by the media.

Already, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Liu Jianchao (劉建超) has threatened that Canadian criticism of China's human rights policies could jeopardize trade relations.

And the threats seem to have hit home.

Just one day after the announcement of Celil's sentence, Ottawa's rhetoric had already shown signs of softening. There were no longer questions of the injustice of the arrest, or the fact that Celil had been rendered from Uzbekistan (a country whose human rights record tellingly pales in comparison with China's) or, for that matter, of the absence of due process in his sentencing, including China's refusal to recognize his Canadian citizenship and, consequently, barring Canadian consular officials from getting in touch with him -- something even the Syrian government, a so-called state sponsor of terrorism, would not deny Arar, except on a few occasions. In one day, Canadian authorities had gone from opposing Celil's very detention to evaluating "allegations that Mr. Celil has been mistreated while in Chinese custody and possibly subjected to torture," to quote the Canadian foreign minister. In other words, Canada was no longer voicing direct opposition to the life sentence but rather to the possibility that he had been mistreated while in prison.

Harper was right when, back in February, he said that given China's C$9 billion trade surplus with Canada, it stood to lose much more from an interruption in the relationship than Canada does. Unfortunately, however, it isn't current numbers that have a real effect on how trade wags diplomacy, but rather expected future ones. Just as the promise of access to the Chinese market has allowed China to almost completely isolate Taiwan and Tibet, its attraction will ensure that rhetorical jousting aside, nothing will change and Celil, sadly, will not receive the assistance he is entitled to as a Canadian citizen.

MacKay will indeed "raise the issue" with his Chinese counterparts when he visits Beijing and for a few weeks politicians in Ottawa will make their sound bites by repeating that they will "stand tall for that citizen." In other words, Ottawa and Beijing will engage in the shadow play of a diplomatic spat; Canada will wax righteous and China will warn of dire consequences for the relationship. But gradually, the story will taper off into oblivion, just as will Celil.

J. Michael Cole is a writer based in Taipei.
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Imprisoned Canadian in Spotlight as MacKay Heads to China

2007-04-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

Foreign Minister promises to stand up for Canadians 'in peril' in China

By Cindy Chan

The Epoch Times Ottawa Staff

Apr 27, 2007

Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter Mackay (Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images)

- Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Heads to China Amid Calls for Human Rights Wednesday, April 25, 2007

- Canadian Tortured in Chinese Jail, Family Says Wednesday, February 07, 2007

- Canadian Could Face Execution in China Thursday, June 29, 2006

When Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay visits China early next week, the plight of a Canadian citizen who was recently sentenced to life in prison in China under suspect conditions is sure to be on the agenda.

MacKay will first travel to Norway and Belgium for high-level meetings before arriving in China. Meetings with Chinese officials will include setting priorities on Canada-China "productive cooperation" in business, according to the official news release.

However, it's a safe bet that human rights will also be discussed, prompted in particular by a Chinese court's sentencing of Huseyincan Celil, a Uighur Muslim rights activist, on April 19 on charges of separatism and terrorism.

The Canadian government maintains there is no solid evidence for the charges against him. However, Chinese authorities refuse to recognize his Canadian citizenship and have continued to deny him Canadian consular assistance.

The issue has been a top item for the Canadian government in talks with the Chinese since Celil was deported to China from Uzbekistan in June 2006. He had been detained in Uzbekistan in March 2006, apparently at the insistence of Chinese authorities. The prime minister has raised his case personally.

In March, MacKay told The Epoch Times that the government would not stop raising cases like Celil's in the face of pressure from some groups worried about upsetting the Chinese.

"It's not about softening the tone; it's about being consistent and being forceful in our representations when it comes to Canadian citizens," MacKay said. "We take the approach where any Canadian that is abroad, that is in peril, that is in need, we'll be there for them."

Besides issuing a strongly worded statement protesting Celil's verdict, MacKay has assured Mr. Celil's wife, Kamila Telendibaeva, that "Canada will continue to pursue justice" for her husband.

Appeal for 15 Canadian Family Members

Other Canadians also impacted by human rights abuses in China raised their voice this week on the eve of MacKay's trip.

On Wednesday, four Chinese-Canadians spoke at a press conference at Parliament Hill outlining the persecution their family members have faced in China over their belief in Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that is brutally repressed in China by the ruling communist party.

Montreal resident Yao Lian said Falun Gong practitioners in China are "automatically labelled as 'criminals' or 'class enemies' by the regime and do not have any safety." Her husband Ma Jian was sentenced to forced labour for two and a half years on April 18.

Shen Yue appealed for help for his aunts jailed in Hebei province. His mother had earlier been imprisoned for two years during which time she was beaten with electric batons and "was forced to take of her clothes and stand outside," he recounted.

The Falun Dafa Association says there are at least 15 family members of Canadians currently imprisoned in China for their belief in Falun Gong.

As well, a report released last year by former secretary of state David Kilgour and lawyer David Matas concludes that the Chinese authorities have been harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners detained in China for sale in a lucrative organ trade.

While some worry that raising such cases might upset the Chinese and hamper trade, the government said that both trade and human rights can be advanced at the same time.

Acknowledging the trade potential in China, MacKay told The Epoch Times that Canada "should be able to engage them in a respectful way, while at the same time raising in a frank and straightforward way our concerns visa-vis their human rights record."

"We're going to continue to espouse these values for human rights, respect for human rights, values of good governance, values of democracy—that's bedrock to our conservative party and our foreign policy," MacKay said.

Canada Evaluates Bilateral Dialogue

Meanwhile, after six months of studying the widely criticized Canada-China bilateral human rights dialogue, the Parliamentary Subcommittee on International Human Rights is expected to soon release its report.

NDP Human Rights Critic Wayne Marston, a member of the subcommittee, told The Epoch Times that the subcommittee has "proposed some significant change which you will see in the report."

Among countries engaged in human rights dialogues with China, which include the U.S., U.K., Australia, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Japan, and others, Canada is the first to commission an assessment of the dialogue process.

Additional reporting by Jason Loftus

Amnesty urges Canada to send envoy to China

2007-04-29T08:35:00.000-07:00

Last Updated 27/04/2007, 13:33:01

Select text size:

Amnesty International has urged Canada to name a special envoy to seek the liberation of a Chinese-born Canadian sentenced to life in prison in China.

Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, says it is vital to appoint a special envoy who would lead and coordinate Ottawa's efforts to free 37 year old Huseyin Celil.

China's announcement last week of the sentence against the ethnic Uighur on separatism and terrorism charges, during a closed trial, has sparked tensions between Ottawa and Beijing.

AFP reports that Celil's wife, Kamila Telendibaeva, says Celil was extradited from Uzbekistan to China during a trip in May 2006 where he vanished into Chinese custody.

Celil arrived in Canada in 2001 as a refugee after fleeing China, and became a Canadian citizen.

China tells Canada not to meddle

Local media is reporting that the Chinese Foreign Ministry has said that Canada has no right to interfere in the case of a Canadian muslim activist sentenced this month to life in prison in China, for alleged terror links.

Canada has been aggressively lobbying for his release and the dispute is expected to come up when Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay visits China at the end of the month.

Make Celil case 'urgent priority,' wife urges MacKay

2007-04-29T08:33:00.000-07:00

Last Updated: Thursday, April 26, 2007 | 3:26 PM ET

CBC News

The wife of a Canadian citizen imprisoned in China and Amnesty Canada are calling on the foreign affairs minister to make the case a key issue during his upcoming visit to China.

Kamila Telendibaeva, whose husband, Huseyin Celil, is serving a life sentence in a Chinese prison, held a news conference in Ottawa Thursday with her lawyer, Chris MacLeod, and Amnesty Canada secretary-general Alex Neve.

She called on Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay to make her husband's case an "urgent priority" during his visit to China.

Telendibaeva hasn't seen her husband since 2006, when he was arrested while visiting his wife's family in Uzbekistan. She lives in Burlington, Ont., with their four children.

A member of China's minority Muslim Uighurs, Celil, 38, was extradited to China to face charges laid in the early 1990s.

MacLeod called on MacKay, who begins a three-day visit to China Sunday, to request an investigation into Celil's treatment in China. He was denied access to Canadian consular officials and his family alleges he was tortured.

"It's an affront to Canada and it's something we'd ask Minister MacKay to push for," said MacLeod.

"He has a valuable opportunity to put the case at the top of the agenda, to raise it firmly and constructively. It's vital the minister make it ... clear Canada demands and expects unhindered consular access to him."

While MacKay has said he plans to raise the issue during his visit, China's Foreign Ministry on Thursday said Canada has no right to interfere in Celil's case.

Special envoy sought

MacLeod and Neve repeated their call for an independent, non-partisan special envoy to co-ordinate Canada's future response to the case.

The envoy could work within the many facets of the Canada-China relationship — economic, cultural, political — and not be confined to the "formality of legal provisions," said Neve.

MacLeod said China isn't recognizing its own nationalities law that states Chinese lose their citizenship when they become citizens of another country.

"China is sending a message to the Uighur diaspora, telling them 'you can't hide behind another citizenship,'" said MacLeod.

Celil was arrested in 1994 after setting up a political party for the Muslim Uighurs.

Chinese officials also alleged he helped assassinate a political leader in Kyrgyzstan. Celil's family and lawyer have denied that allegation.

Celil escaped prison and later applied for refugee status in 2001 in Turkey, eventually becoming a Canadian citizen and settling in Burlington.

Celil received a life sentence April 19 and has 10 days to appeal the sentence. He was convicted on the crimes of "separating China" and "organizing, leading and participating in terrorist groups, organizations."

Canada has expressed its concern with the sentence, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper raised Celil's case with China's president during a visit last November.

Celil's lawyer hides role

2007-04-29T08:30:00.000-07:00

GEOFFREY YORK

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

April 25, 2007 at 6:13 AM EDT

BEIJING — In a legal system shrouded in fear and intimidation, Huseyin Celil's new lawyer has told his clients to deny his involvement in the sensitive case because of potential retribution from Chinese authorities.

Mr. Celil, the Canadian religious leader sentenced to life imprisonment on terrorism allegations in China last week, decided yesterday to file a court appeal. But his lawyer is so worried about pressure from China's security forces that he has instructed Mr. Celil's family to keep his role secret.

The lawyer, Wei Rujiu, told The Globe and Mail this week that he is withdrawing from the case because of "strong pressure" from the Chinese authorities. But his client's wife, Kamila Celil, said Mr. Wei is quietly remaining on the case, while telling the family to conceal his role in the appeal.

His fears may be real. Hundreds of Chinese lawyers have been arrested in recent years and many have been beaten or sentenced to prison terms. Many have been charged with "perjury," a loosely defined term that is often used against a lawyer who frustrates a prosecutor's case.

China's legal system is heavily weighted in favour of the authorities. A recent report on more than six million court cases, covering the past eight years, found that 99.34 per cent of all defendants were found guilty. In an estimated 70 per cent of cases, the defendants are unable to hire lawyers to represent them at their trials.

"A lawyer has to have courage to handle criminal cases, especially these sensitive cases," prominent Beijing lawyer Mo Shaoping told a conference last year. "Many lawyers would rather not be involved in criminal cases. The risks are too big."

The case of Mr. Celil is one of the most sensitive in the country. The case has damaged relations between China and Canada, provoking sharp protests from the federal government because China refused to allow Canada to have consular access to its citizen. Amnesty International has voiced concern that Mr. Celil may have been convicted after an unfair trial and a confession extracted through torture. China, for its part, sees Mr. Celil as a separatist who was plotting independence for the Muslim region of Xinjiang, where China has been clamping down on activists for years.

Foreign Minister Peter MacKay is visiting Beijing next week and promises to raise the Celil case in his meetings with senior Chinese leaders.

Like many other sensitive cases, the Celil case has been pushed swiftly through the Chinese legal system, with little chance for a fair trial. He was not permitted access to Canadian diplomats or an independent lawyer. His trial was conducted behind closed doors and was completed in just five hours. His government-appointed lawyer said little to defend him.

For the appeal, Mrs. Celil and her Canadian lawyer, Chris MacLeod, decided to hire an independent Chinese lawyer. They found Mr. Wei, a well-respected lawyer in Beijing who has worked on civil-rights cases in the past. According to Mrs. Celil, he has already been paid $12,000 to handle the appeal.

In an interview last month, Mr. Wei confirmed that he had been hired by the Celil family, but was reluctant to discuss it. Last week, after the guilty verdict and life prison sentence, Mr. Wei was again reluctant to discuss the case because of its political sensitivity. He quoted a historian who had noted that every issue in the United States - including political issues - can become matters of law. In China, he said, "everything including legal issues can become matters of politics."

In an interview on Monday, he said he had decided not to take the Celil case. "I feel very strong pressure now," he said, refusing to elaborate.

Protest Celil imprisonment by boycotting retailers

2007-04-29T08:25:00.000-07:00

By Mel Basbaum, Dundas
The Hamilton Spectator
(Apr 24, 2007)

Re: 'Life in prison for Celil; China claims Canadian conducted separatist and terrorist activities' (April 20)

Clearly our government will have no influence over the treatment of Huseyin Celil by the Chinese.

I recommend some form of boycott by Canadians. Boycotting Chinese goods is unlikely to have much effect since Canadians are such a small part of their export market.

As an alternative I would recommend a boycott of a large multinational retailer who profits from doing business with the Chinese, but also cares about their business in Canada.

I suggest starting with a company such as Wal-Mart. It markets Chinese products to Canadians and can bring pressure to bear on the Chinese government.

Other companies could be added later, including fast-food chains who profit from their outlets in China.

Respond to Celil situation with Olympic boycott

By Jeremy Woodley, Dundas
The Hamilton Spectator
(Apr 28, 2007)

Re: 'Protest Celil imprisonment by boycotting retailers' and 'Canada will continue to push for Celil, says minister' (both Letters, April 24)

Both of these letters responded to the life imprisonment of Canadian/Chinese citizen Huseyin Celil for "separatist activities" in the Uighur Autonomous Region of China.

Mel Basbaum, opining that our government will have no influence on the Chinese, suggests a boycott by Canadians of companies such as Wal-Mart which market Chinese products in Canada. While not wishing to discourage this proposal, I think many people of principle already avoid Wal-Mart (if they can afford to) because of its labour policies. But there is another possible strategy.

In his letter, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay stated that, "the government of Canada remains seriously concerned about the human rights situation in China." Given that, why does it not ask its athletes to boycott the 2008 Olympic Games?

There are many possible grounds for such action -- Celil, other imprisoned activists, alleged organ harvesting from detainees, the takeover of Tibet and suppression of Buddhism, Chinese support for Sudan over Darfur, excessive use of capital punishment. In all these cases, China will claim they are internal matters but they are incompatible with the Olympic spirit of fair play.

Repression Of Chinese Minorities

2007-04-29T08:23:00.000-07:00

25 April 2007

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In its annual human rights report on China, the U.S. State Department expressed great concern over continued violations of the political, religious, and cultural rights of China’s Uighur Muslims. According to the report, Xinjiang authorities continued last year to detain and arrest persons engaged in activities considered threatening to government authority, including unauthorized religious activities, and charged them with a range of offences including state security crimes.

Chinese Muslims are subject to the same stringent registration requirements that other religious communities face; however, these regulations are enforced particularly strictly among Xinjiang’s Uighur Muslims. All mosques in China must register with the state-run China Islamic Association. Imams must be licensed by the state before they can practice, and must regularly attend patriotic education sessions. Xinjiang authorities often accuse individuals engaged in peaceful religious activity with committing the "three evils" of terrorism, separatism, and extremism.

In China, Uighur rights activists and their families can face harsh penalties. A Chinese court in Xinjiang recently sentenced Ablikim Abdiriyim to nine years in prison for allegedly "instigating and engaging in secessionist activities." Mr. Ablikim is the son of the exiled president of the World Uighur Congress, Rebiya Kadeer. Two of Ms. Kadeer's other sons were charged with tax offenses, one of whom was given a seven-year prison sentence. There are reports that Mr. Ablikim and another son were mistreated while in detention.

The United States has repeatedly raised concerns about both the charges and the lack of due process in these cases, which appear to have been initiated in retaliation for Ms. Kadeer’s political activities in the United States. We have also raised concerns over the lack of due process in the extradition, conviction, and sentencing of Huseyincan Celil, a Canadian citizen who was extradited from Uzbekistan to China in March 2006.

China shares with the international community a legitimate right, and an obligation, to combat terrorism wherever it occurs. At the same time, the Chinese government should not use the war on terrorism as a pretext for cracking down on Uighurs or anyone else engaged in peaceful political dissent. "Whenever China restrains its people’s freedoms," said Thomas Christensen, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, "it limits their ability to achieve their full potential." China, Mr. Christensen said, will not be considered a leader in the international arena until it develops a more open, transparent, and free society.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Heads to China Amid Calls for Human Rights

2007-04-29T08:20:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Chan

Epoch Times Ottawa Staff

Apr 25, 2007

Falun Gong practitioners re-enact a scene of organ harvesting in China. Canadian investigators David Kilgour and David Matas report that the vital organs of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience are seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, mostly to foreigners. (Xiaoyan Sun/The Epoch Times)

- China's New Regulation Exposes Organ Removal From Live Minors Monday, March 26, 2007

- Are Canadian Taxes Paying for Stolen Organs? Friday, February 09, 2007

- Chinese Officials Still Killing Falun Gong for Organs, Report Says Thursday, February 01, 2007

As Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay prepares to visit China early next week, distressed Canadians are calling on him to put top priority on human rights and the rescue of their family members persecuted and imprisoned by the Chinese regime.

MacKay will travel to Norway and Belgium for high-level meetings before arriving in China at the end of the month. Meetings with Chinese officials will include setting priorities on Canada-China "productive cooperation" in business. However, human rights are expected to be on his agenda, prompted in particular by a Chinese court's recent verdict of life imprisonment against a Canadian citizen.

'Continue to Pursue Justice'

Huseyincan Celil, a Uighur rights activist, was sentenced last Thursday on charges of separatism and terrorism. The Canadian government maintains there is no firm evidence for the charges against him. However, Chinese authorities refuse to recognize his Canadian citizenship and have continued to deny him Canadian consular assistance.

Besides issuing a strong statement protesting the verdict, MacKay has assured Mr. Celil's wife, Kamila Telendibaeva, that "Canada will continue to pursue justice" for her husband.

In an interview with The Globe and Mail yesterday he described Canada's relationship with China as "large, complex, multi-faceted" and one that "needs some nurturing." His approach to urging China on human rights is to do so "with tact," he said.

Appeal for 15 Family Members

Meanwhile, today in Ottawa Falun Dafa Association held a press conference on Parliament Hill asking for MacKay's help to secure the release of 15 Canadians' family members imprisoned in China for their practice of Falun Gong. Four relatives spoke at the conference.

Montreal resident Yao Lian said Falun Gong practitioners in China are "automatically labeled as 'criminals' or 'class enemies' by the regime and do not have any safety." Her husband Ma Jian was sentenced to forced labour camp for two and a half years on April 18.

Falun Dafa Association President Li Xun and spokesperson Lucy Zhou (front) host a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada calling on Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay to urge Chinese authorities to stop the persecution of Falun Gong. In the back from left to right are Michael Zeng, Shen Yue, Lin Shenli, and Yao Lian—Falun Gong practitioners appealing for the release of their family members imprisoned in China for their Falun Gong beliefs. (Donna He/The Epoch Times)

Shen Yue appealed for help for his aunts jailed in Hebei province. His mother had earlier been imprisoned for 2 years. She was beaten with electric batons and "was forced to take off her clothes and stand outside," he recounted. Huang Xin, whose son Michael Zeng lives in Toronto, is serving an eight-year sentence. She has reportedly been severely tortured.

Toronto resident Lin Shenli's brother Mingli is serving a six-year sentence. Lin Shenli himself spent over two years in labour camp before being reunited with his wife in Canada in 2002, thanks to the help of Amnesty International and Canadian government officials, he said.

Key Policy of Persecution

Falun Dafa Association President Li Xun noted, "The persecution of Falun Gong is a key policy of the Chinese regime among its many severe human rights violations. It is a serious issue that must be raised during any human rights talks with the regime."

According to United Nations Special Rapporteur Manfred Nowak's 2006 report on torture cases in China, Falun Gong practitioners account for 66 percent of victims of alleged torture while in government custody. Falun Gong practitioners account for 66 percent of victims of alleged torture while in government custody. The United States State Department's 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices stated that in China, "Police reportedly had quotas for Falun Gong practitioners" and has "continued to detain current and former Falun Gong practitioners and place them in reeducation camps."

The United States State Department's 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices stated that in China, "Police reportedly had quotas for Falun Gong arrests" and "continued to detain current and former Falun Gong practitioners and place them in reeducation camps."

They also drew attention to "Bloody Harvest," an investigation report into allegations of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners by the Chinese regime. Authored by Winnipeg-based lawyer David Matas and former Secretary of State David Kilgour, the report concludes that "there has been and continues today to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners." Matas and Kilgour have traveled to 30 countries to raise awareness of their report since its release last July.

Voice of International Community

Meanwhile, after six months of study on the widely criticized Canada-China bilateral human rights dialogue, the Parliamentary Subcommittee on International Human Rights chaired by Conservative MP Jason Kenney is expected shortly to release its report. NDP Human Rights Critic Wayne Marston, a member of the subcommittee, told The Epoch Times yesterday that the subcommittee has "proposed some significant change which you will see in the report."

Li referred to "Canadian integrity and responsibility." Indeed, a 2002 Private Member's Motion passed unanimously in the House of Commons resulted in the release of three practitioners. The Motion, introduced by Conservative MP Scott Reid, urged then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to raise the issue of thirteen practitioners with Canadian family ties at his meeting with Chinese leader Jiang Zemin at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit.

Larry Bagnell and Pierre Poilievre are among other MPs who have lent support.

On the rescue of the family members, Li said, "The voice of the international community is very significant and very important."

Relations with China need nurturing, MacKay says

2007-04-29T08:18:00.000-07:00

BRIAN LAGHI

From Monday's Globe and Mail

April 23, 2007 at 5:51 AM EDT

OTTAWA — Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay embarks on his long-awaited first trip to China this week, arguing that Canada can press its case for human rights "with tact" while still building on the robust business relationship with the economic giant.

"I agree that the relationship with China needs some nurturing, as it would with any large, complex, multi-faceted relationship ...," Mr. MacKay said in an interview yesterday.

"They've come some distance from where they were," he added, "and if we're able to position ourselves as a trusted ally and an interested country that isn't making these pronouncements in a provocative way, but in a helpful way, then I think Canada is positioned very well to influence China positively."

Mr. MacKay's trip comes a week after the controversial sentencing of Huseyin Celil, an Islamic religious leader and Canadian citizen who was condemned by a Chinese court to life in prison. The minister leaves Wednesday, travelling first to Europe for meetings with NATO foreign ministers.

He has pledged to raise the issue of Mr. Celil with his Chinese hosts and to review a 1999 agreement with China on consular relations. Sources said Mr. MacKay may also make mention of opening a series of new trade offices. The visit comes after a year of tension between the two nations, prompted in part by the Celil case.

Last fall, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Chinese officials traded jabs prior to a meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation Summit.

Mr. Harper said before the meeting that Canada would not sell out its values in return for unfettered access to Chinese markets.

Mr. MacKay acknowledged yesterday that the Conservative government has taken a different tack than the Liberals before it, but said that doesn't mean the Tories can't position themselves as a trusted partner.

"We need to engage with China further on terms that we feel are appropriate, are positive and moving in a direction that we feel are consistent with Canadian values; that includes promotion of democracy, that includes enhanced human rights," he said.

"Those goals can be achieved without having a deterioration in our commercial partnership or our trade relationship, in my view, if it's done with tact and if it's done without being viewed or characterized as confrontational."

The meeting comes as some experts say it appears the Conservative government may be taking some steps to improve the relationship with Beijing.

It has, for example, moved to push forward with a plan to strengthen economic, social and educational ties. The government's former deputy minister of foreign affairs, Peter Harder, met with counterparts last December to set an agenda to continue talks about the Strategic Partnership, a dialogue that had all but stopped last fall after Canada cooled its relations with the Chinese.

Mr. Harder said he sees some signs of increased engagement.

"I do think there is a deliberate attempt to, and strategy to, engage China on a broader range of issues and to ensure that we develop multi-faceted engagement," he said.

"Canada, I would argue, is losing relative position in China and yet China continues to be our second-largest trading partner ... This is not an inconsequential relationship."

Mr. MacKay also said the two governments plan to re-engage in a human-rights dialogue that had spurred sharp criticisms from some members of the Conservative government. A subcommittee headed by Tory MP Jason Kenney is expected to issue a report criticizing the dialogue as ineffective and asking for improvements.

"This has simply been a matter of getting all the right people around the table at the right time," Mr. MacKay said, adding that he has asked his deputy about getting the group back together again.

Life in prison for Celil

2007-04-29T08:10:00.000-07:00

China claims Canadian conducted separatist and terrorist activities

By Dana Borcea
The Hamilton Spectator
(Apr 20, 2007)

Kamila Telendibaeva stayed up late to find out if and when she would ever see her husband again.

The call she was waiting for came from foreign affairs just after 1 a.m. yesterday.

The news was bad.

Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen, was sentenced to life in prison in China for alleged separatist and terrorist activities.

"I was expecting three, maybe four years," a still stunned Telendibaeva said yesterday in her Burlington townhouse.

She insists her husband is innocent and being targeted by Chinese officials for seeking justice for Western China's Muslim, Turkish-speaking Uyghur minority.

"He was fighting for human rights," she said.

Celil, 38, was arrested in Uzbekistan in March 2006 while the couple was visiting Telendibaeva's family.

Originally from China, Celil escaped to Uzbekistan and then Turkey, fleeing Chinese authorities.

He came to Canada as a refugee six years ago and became a citizen in 2005.

Telendibaeva said they risked a trip back to the region to visit her sick mother. They figured their Canadian passports would guarantee their safety.

Since returning from Uzbekistan without her husband last year, the 29-year-old has raised their four children alone.

Her oldest, Mohammad, 7, is wheelchair-bound and suffers from severe developmental disabilities.

Her youngest has never met his father.

Telendibaeva was three months pregnant with Zubyir when Celil was arrested.

She has decided to put off telling her sons the truth about their father.

"I show them his picture and always just say he's going to come home."

Even after a sleepless night, Telendibaeva appeared composed and resolved.

"I will fight every day to bring him home," she said. "I will never give up. Not ever."

Between back-to-back phone calls and a barrage of questions from a small army of reporters parked in her modest but immaculate living room, she said she would continue petitioning Canadian government officials to bring her husband home.

She has been in daily contact with Canadian officials for several months but complains more should have been done earlier to pressure officials.

Despite a one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper last October and a call from Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay yesterday morning, Telendibaeva said Canada should have stood up for her husband much earlier.

"It's not enough. He is still in jail."

A foreign affairs spokesperson provided no response to the criticism.

An Asia region campaigner with Amnesty International agreed the Canadian government should have pressed harder.

"I believe there was more they could have done," said Cheryl Hotchkiss.

She added Amnesty was concerned for Celil's safety given his lack of consular access and the threat of torture he faces in a Chinese prison.

Hotchkiss said "consistently applied international pressure" could help win an appeal and fair trial for Celil.

Relatives who were in court Wednesday to witness Celil's brief sentencing said he did not appear physically harmed.

They told Telendibaeva he spoke only briefly and told the court, "It's not fair, it's all lies."

dborcea@thespec.com

905-526-3214

Canada blasts China over Uighur refugee's sentence

2007-04-29T08:09:00.000-07:00

`SOURED RELATIONS': The Canadian foreign minister said his country would `stand tall' to protect the human rights of one of its citizens who was jailed for separatism

AFP, OTTAWA
Saturday, Apr 21, 2007, Page 5

Canada blasted China on Thursday for sentencing a Canadian citizen to life in prison on terrorism and separatism charges in a closed trial, saying the verdict had soured relations between the two countries.

Huseyin Celil, 37, a Chinese-born ethnic Uighur, was sentenced to life in prison for "the crime of splitting the motherland" and involvement in terrorism, China's foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao (劉建超) said.

Celil was extradited from Uzbekistan to China during a trip in May last year where he vanished into Chinese custody. Canadian diplomats tried to gain access to him in Uzbekistan and are trying to gain access to him in China.

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay told reporters: "The stakes are very high for Mr Celil and certainly this case has had a spillover impact on Canada's relationship with China."

In a statement, he said Ottawa "remains gravely concerned about allegations that Mr Celil has been mistreated while in Chinese custody and possibly subjected to torture," accusing Beijing of a possible "serious breach" of the UN convention against torture.

The verdict comes ahead of a visit to China later this month by MacKay, during which he said he would raise the issue.

"It's been raised at the highest levels including the president of China and I certainly intend to pursue it when I arrive in China next week," he said outside Parliament. "We don't intend to let this case go."

"When it comes to human rights, when it comes to the rights of a Canadian citizen, we will stand tall for that citizen," he said.

MacKay also chided Beijing for "persistently refusing to respond adequately to our concerns with respect to due process" for Celil and for failing to grant Canadian diplomats access to him "in spite of repeated requests."

Dual citizens

"As we believe that China did not live up to the spirit of the 1999 Canada-China consular agreement in this case, we will be conducting a review of this agreement to determine whether it is, in fact, an effective means of safeguarding Chinese-Canadian dual citizens traveling on Canadian passports," he said.

The minister said he registered his "deep disappointment" with the Chinese charge d'affaires in Ottawa and told Celil's wife the Canadian government would continue to "pursue justice" for him.

"We strongly urge the Chinese authorities to respect their commitment to provide Canadian officials with information about Mr Celil and to ensure that he is accorded due process," MacKay said.

Earlier, Liu had said: "The case of Huseyin Celil is an internal affair and Canada has no right to interfere."

The diplomatic row is the latest in a series of bilateral irritants that have included talks between a senior Canadian official and the Dalai Lama, accusations that China is spying on Canadian corporations, Canada's failure to deport a Chinese fugitive who allegedly steered a multibillion-dollar smuggling ring as well as stalled trade negotiations.

Celil fled China a decade ago and arrived in Canada in 2001 as a refugee and became a Canadian citizen. He was arrested in Tashkent on March 27 last year while trying to renew a visitor's visa in the Uzbek capital.
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Johnny Neihu's Mailbag

2007-04-29T08:06:00.000-07:00

What's a worse fate? Being divested of misconceptions of Taiwanese backwardness or looking up a dictionary to become lilterated?

Saturday, Apr 21, 2007, Page 8

Brickbats for the Biggerses

Dear Johnny,
I chuckled reading your column on the Biggers family's proposed move to Taiwan ("Tips for vulnerable missionaries," April 14, page 8). You must forgive their ignorance of Taiwan (or indeed, anything not American), as they don't understand the rest of the world any better. We in Canada have been putting up with this forever.

I hope your reference to being "sent into humiliating exile in some godforsaken, fearful backwater. Like Canada" was just tongue in cheek. OK ... I'm sure it was.

I spent two-and-a-half years in Taipei (2003-2005) teaching English and I am very fond of your country and its people. I try to keep abreast of what's going on and wish you well in your struggles for democracy and independence.

I hope one day Canada will be the first to recognize Taiwan as an independent nation.

Ken Redlack

Johnny replies: What is it about Canadians? They seem to be just about the only people in the world other than a few cousins of mine in Kaohsiung County who are able to stand up in public and call the Chicom spade a spade (note how Ottawa is standing up to Beijing over the persecution of Huseyin Celil). And when you poke fun at Canadians, they're incredibly polite and write nice letters!

Dear Johnny,
I've just finished firing off an e-mail to the author of the article about the Biggers family from South Carolina. What a load of crap! Just what we need, more Christians out to "save" the world. I do hope you also sent a letter and that more of your readers will join in.

As an American (shhh, please don't tell anyone) who quit an excellent job and sold her home (and everything in it -- including the car!) to make the move to Taiwan, I simply can't understand why anyone who has visited here would have the warped view that the chumps from South Carolina have.

My first visit here was for two weeks in May 2002 to attend a Wu Bai and China Blue concert, and that's when I decided that, come hell or high water, I was going to live out the rest of my days in Taiwan. You can keep the US, it stinks.

Marla Hill
Taipei

Johnny replies: Come on Marla, fair's fair. You know as well as I do that a couple of months in Taipei will divest this good family of any misconceptions. And I think you should sympathize with them instead of calling them and their home nasty words, because converting Taiwanese to Christianity is a feat comparable to the feeding of the 5,000 (which is to say, if you're not divine then you're in for some major disappointment). If I ever run into them, you can be sure I will offer them a beer -- well, perhaps a fermented asparagus juice if they prefer.

The simpler, the better

Dear Johnny,
While I thoroughly enjoyed your recent artical of "Gloves off: Time to knock and split" (April 7, page 8), and was able to grasp 90 percent of your story, I did for 4 or 5 times needed to look up in the English dictionary.

Can you not be a little more simpler and not so philosophycal? After all, I consider myself lilterated.

Une Person from other side of the Glove

Johnny replies: Thanks for writing. But hey, what's wrong with being philosophycal or looking up a dictionary? It's a much better fate than being illilterated.
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Supporters seeking new lawyer for Celil

2007-02-28T21:25:00.000-08:00

Supporters of Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen detained in China, say that his court-appointed lawyer is inadequate and that Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs has recommended they obtain independent legal advice there.

Mr. Celil, who was born in China but came to Canada as a refugee in 2001, was detained in Uzbekistan last March while travelling with his family on Canadian passports. Last summer, Uzbekistan deported him to China, where he faces multiple terrorism-related charges. Despite his Canadian citizenship, Mr. Celil has so far been denied access to Canadian consulate officials or lawyers.

Mr. Celil is a member of the Uighur people, a Muslim minority group whose calls for greater independence have angered officials in Beijing. Chinese officials have for years accused myriad Uighurs of terrorism -- one of Mr. Celil's childhood acquaintances was executed in China earlier this month -- but members of the Uighur community abroad say any act of defiance or separatism easily falls under the Chinese definition of terrorism.

Mehmet Tohti, the president of the Uighur Canadian Association, sent an e-mail to supporters yesterday asking for donations to help raise the $12,000 he estimates it will cost to hire an independent lawyer in China.

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Engaging China requires a balance of values and interests

2007-02-28T21:22:00.000-08:00

Web-exclusive comment

Engaging China requires a balance of values and interests

SERGIO MARCHI

Special to Globe and Mail Update

The recent exchange in the news media between the Canadian government and China's assistant minister of foreign affairs underlines fundamental differences in the approach to building the kind of relationship where difficult questions can be raised, discussed and settled in a mutually respectful manner that is likely to lead to change. Beijing may place more importance on relationships than other governments, but an open and trusting rapport is a prerequisite to achieving diplomatic goals for most countries.

We support the view that foreign policy toward China must represent the full range of Canada's values and interests, which cannot be pursued in isolation or with one as a precondition to the other. Trade, investment and human rights are all indisputably important elements of the bilateral relationship. No one suggests that Canada pursue a purely commercial relationship. But if the focus is solely on human rights and public rebukes in a situation absent of a trusting relationship, Canada runs the risk of seeing its values ignored without seeing any of its interests met.

There is no doubt that political change in China has proceeded much more slowly than economic development, which has lifted hundreds of millions above the World Bank poverty line since China's opening in 1978. It is not surprising that Beijing has focused on economic rights during its initial growth. But there are many indicators that an understanding of human rights is developing and progress is being made.

China's five-year plan for 2006-2011 focuses very specifically on the quality of growth and social stability. This includes the need to develop environmental protection standards and enforcement, social safety nets, educational improvements, health reform, measures to improve conditions for migrant labour and other goals. Officials spend considerable time examining foreign experiences to see how they might be applied to China.

Canada has played a positive role in this development through engagement from a variety of sources: business, Canadian International Development Agency projects, university exchanges and training programs. China has sought advice from Canadian insurers on various aspects of establishing an effective public pension fund system, a key priority for future social stability. Canadian-trained Chinese judges have been making landmark decisions. While it is often assumed that human rights are universal and inalienable, the institutions we build to protect them are imperfect and are constantly evolving. That has been the case for Canada — our experience is what we need to share.

China has demonstrated considerable openness to hearing ideas. But it is one thing to present ideas and suggestions; it is quite another to make demands. The country's colonial past has made it highly sensitive to perceived outside pressure. There is a growing popular resentment to foreign lecturing in the absence of deep understanding of the Chinese realities. (Even in the Western world, lecturing is a delicate affair, be it presidential candidates in France or U.S. ambassadors in Ottawa.)

With growing global influence, China has become an increasingly active participant in the global economic and political system. An accelerated timetable of World Trade Organization accession, which imposed significant hardships for Chinese domestic firms, demonstrated just how determined the country was to become a full global player. China made a similar commitment to constructive participation in the United Nations and its agencies, as well as in multilateral financial institutions. The importance of China's integration in the international system is perhaps best demonstrated by Beijing's participation in reaching a tentative deal on Pyongyang's nuclear program. If we imagine an isolated, marginalized and nuclear China alongside North Korea, in place of an integrated and engaged China, the situation in that part of the world would be considerably more critical and less predictable.

There is no doubt that the bilateral relationship is complicated by attempts to resolve ongoing consular cases. Certainly, we expect China and other countries to fully recognize and respect the rights of Canadian citizens abroad, and for our government to pursue those interests vigorously. The challenge is overcoming fundamental differences in perspectives in cases such as those of Huseyin Celil and Lai Changxing.

Both Canada and China need to pursue acceptable solutions to individual cases without risking a wide range of bilateral interests. A mutually respectful relationship is a precondition to finding workable solutions to specific cases and maintaining the other dialogues central to the relationship. (China contends Mr. Celil's name is one of many aliases for Guler Dilaver, a Chinese citizen who was under an Interpol red notice at the time that Mr. Celil successfully applied for refugee status in Canada. Mr. Lai remains one of China's most wanted fugitives, but is afforded all due process in Canada.)

Massive social change is clearly under way in China. In order to help encourage and facilitate this reform, we need to appreciate that effective and constructive dialogue, on any subject, is based on a relationship built on trust and mutual respect. And mutual respect requires some understanding of the differences between our own two societies. In this regard, the recent visits by the Canadian Ministers of Finance, International Trade, Natural Resources and Agriculture were most valuable.

Let us therefore engage China effectively on human rights. Let us also have a comprehensive and balanced framework for our bilateral and multilateral discussions. For the pursuit of values without also emphasizing interests puts both at risk.

Sergio Marchi is a former international trade minister and ambassador to the WTO who serves as president of the Canada China Business Council.

Senator blasts Harper's stand on China

2007-02-22T22:45:00.000-08:00

CanWest News Service; Vancouver Sun

Published: Thursday, February 22, 2007

Senator Jack Austin said former prime minister Jean Chretien was particularly successful in securing the release of political prisoners.

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper's "morally-righteous" criticism of China makes it less likely, not more, that Beijing will agree to release political prisoners such as Huseyin Celil, Liberal Senator Jack Austin said Wednesday in an interview marking his retirement from the Senate.

Austin, who has advocated closer Canada-China ties throughout his business and political career, said the government's focus on human rights will backfire for both political prisoners and Canadian businesses.

"It makes it even more difficult," said Austin, who hits the Senate's mandatory-retirement age of 75 on March 2. "How can they let him (Celil) go when it would say to the world, 'Oh, anybody who bashes us on moral high ground will get results from us?'"

Austin said the same dynamic makes it unlikely China will give Canada Approved Destination Status, which would allow Canada to tap into the potentially huge market of middle-class Chinese travelling overseas. Canada is one of the few countries in the world without ADS.

An agreement to improve protection of investor rights for Canadian firms operating in China is also at stake, he said.

Harper and his ministers have regularly blasted China's dismal human rights record, citing in particular the Celil case. The prime minister has said his government won't stop speaking out for the sake of the "almighty dollar."

The Chinese last year jailed the Canadian activist, who was born and raised in China and is a member of the Uyghur minority group, alleging he has terrorist links.

China does not recognize his Canadian citizenship.

A call and e-mail to Harper's office wasn't returned.

Vancouver Sun

Resolve dual-citizenship row with China, MPs urged

2007-02-22T22:43:00.000-08:00

Resolve dual-citizenship row with China, MPs urged

300,000 Canadian passport holders at risk because of Beijing's policy, experts warn

JEFF SALLOT

OTTAWA -- In the wake of the Huseyin Celil human-rights case, a parliamentary subcommittee is grappling with the question of what Ottawa can do to protect thousands of Canadians of Chinese origin if they run afoul of the authorities in China.

Experts told the international human rights subcommittee of the House yesterday that about 300,000 Canadian passport holders of Chinese origin live or work in China or travel to other places in Asia where their status as Canadian citizens might be questioned if they got into a legal jam.

The Harper government would be wise to turn down the political volume and try to improve relations with Beijing to find a solution to the dual-citizenship issue, the panel was told by Paul Evans, chairman of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, and former Liberal trade minister Sergio Marchi, who is now president of the Canada China Business Council.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has linked relations with China to the case of Mr. Celil, a Canadian born in China and was deported back there by Uzbekistan, even though he was travelling on his Canadian passport. China refuses to recognize dual citizenship for people born in China. Mr. Celil is being tried in China on terrorism charges.

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A huge number of other Canadians of Chinese origin are "potentially at risk" because Beijing won't recognize their Canadian citizenship, Mr. Evans said.

"We don't think megaphone diplomacy is an alternative that will advance the cause" of human rights in dealings with China," Mr. Marchi said.

The Chinese resent "being lectured to by foreigners," he added.

"There are times when the Chinese don't make life easy" for Canada, Mr. Marchi said. "That's not reason enough to shout louder."

Mr. Evans said Canada risks losing a lot of business if the Conservative government does not build a warm political relationship with China.

Liberal and Conservative MPs on the subcommittee, including chairman Jason Kenney, the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, challenged the witnesses to demonstrate that any Canadian company has lost business with China because the year-old Harper government is taking a harder line on human rights.

It is hard to demonstrate that commercial retaliation takes place, Mr. Evans said. "No, we can't point to specifics. But we don't know yet the full Chinese reaction to cool political relations."

Chinese political officials still have a big say on megaprojects and in what foreign countries are allowed to do business in the aviation and financial-services sectors, Mr. Evans added.

Mr. Marchi said there is evidence France lost a nuclear reactor sale to China because Beijing was angry with a French decision to sell jet warplanes to Taiwan.

Mr. Kenney didn't seem to be impressed, citing current figures showing that Canada runs a lopsided trade deficit with China.

He also said that Canadian business with China did not languish, but actually grew after Canada's chilly response to the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989.

The Chinese are engaging in industrial espionage in Canada, stealing corporate secrets, Mr. Kenney said.

Thursday, February 22, 2007 on Page A2

Another Canadian held by Chinese

2007-02-20T16:31:00.000-08:00

China holds GTA man in jail without charge

Mississauga electronics supplier held for four months over business dispute

Feb 20, 2007 04:30 AM

Nicholas Keung
STAFF REPORTER

A Chinese Canadian businessman from Mississauga has been detained – without formal charge – in Fujian, China, for four months in the midst of a business dispute with his distribution company's Hong Kong supplier.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has scheduled a hearing into the dispute involving Jimmy Chen Jian Yuan in March. But his wife, Yang Jian Ping, says the family has been bullied by the supplier's parent company in mainland China, Wanlida Group, to turn over most of the company "in exchange for his release by the Chinese authorities."

The company owned by Chen, 50, distributed DVD players and other electronic equipment under the Malata brand name to stores such as the Bay, Sears, Future Shop and Best Buy. Chen was detained by Chinese customs officials upon his arrival Oct. 13 at Shenzhen, on the Hong Kong-mainland border, while he was headed for a trade show in Guangdong and a scheduled meeting with Wanlida executives in their Fujian headquarters.

He was transferred immediately to the Zhang Zhou City First Police Detention in Fujian, where he remains in custody.

The "notice of detention" issued by the Zhang Zhou police Oct. 16 claimed Chen was being held for "the alleged criminal offence of contract fraud," based on Wanlida's allegations that he had defrauded the company of $5 million (U.S.) in inventory.

In 2005, Malata Group (Hong Kong) filed a civil suit in Ontario, complaining that Chen's company hadn't been paying on time. Chen's company argued that there had been shipping delays and quality issues with the Chinese products, leading to high inventory volume and overdue payments.

The Ontario court has since seized the Canadian company's inventory, worth about $3.7 million, as well as bank accounts totalling close to $1.8 million.

The case is expected to be heard next month.

Chen's Beijing lawyer, Li Ke Min, characterized the case as "a typical economic dispute instead of a contract fraud," and insisted China's courts have no jurisdiction because Chen never entered into a direct contract with the mainland China company. The case is a civil matter, not criminal, he noted.

"To protect the interests of the local Wanlida Group Co. Ltd. (in China), some individuals of Zhang Zhou Public Security Authority intervened in an economic dispute regardless of what laws and regulations had stipulated," Li, of the Beijing Ruide Law Office, said in a Chinese-language statement. "What Zhan Zhou Public Security Authority has done to Chen seriously breached related regulations."

Officials with China's embassy in Ottawa and Wanlida in China could not be reached for comment yesterday due to the Chinese New Year holiday.

However, Chinese officials have recognized Chen's Canadian citizenship and allowed the Canadian consul from Guangdong to visit him twice to ensure he's in good health.

According to court documents filed in Ontario, Chen, an electrical engineer who moved here from Fujian in 1994 as an entrepreneur, began wholesaling Wanlida products – most noted for their popular karaoke devices – in Canada in 1999. He registered the Malata trademark here in 2001. The Canadian company had more than $10 million in annual sales in North America and Europe before the seizure shut it down.

Founded by Wu Hui Tian in 1984, Wanlida is one of China's top electronics enterprises, employing 10,000 people. It focuses on high- and new-technology electronics, from small appliances to GPS products to digital audio and video.

Chen's wife told the Star the conflict emerged in 2004, when Wanlida expressed interest in taking control of the independent Canadian operation. The dispute and subsequent civil lawsuit with the Hong Kong company followed.

"My husband and I went to China in good faith, hoping to talk to Mr. Wu and negotiate a settlement. The officers at the customs simply took him for questioning. They sent me away. No one told me why he was taken into custody," recalled Yang, who hasn't been allowed to see her husband since his arrest. The family lawyer has met Chen only three times, the last in December.

Yang points out that the notice of detention, which she managed to obtain later, describes the date of his arrest as June 14 – four months earlier than his actual arrival.

"I wonder whether my husband's detention was legal, or was it merely a case where the Chinese officials are helping the rich people to get whatever they want?" she said in an interview. "The dispute is already in front of a Canadian court and the case should be dealt with here by the rule of law."

The couple's daughter, Chen Yan, said she and her mother met privately with a Wanlida official in Fujian in November, after her father's arrest, and were offered a settlement that would involve transferring 97 per cent of Malata Canada's assets to Wanlida's Hong Kong subsidiary.

"It was proposed to us verbally. They said they'd not show it to us in writing until we promised we'd sign it. Or my father would be in China for a very long time," recalled Chen Yan, 25. "It became very clear to me that my father's arrest is closely related to (the lawsuit here). They basically are using the Chinese authority to arrest my father, so they can force us to settle in Canada."

The family rejected the offer and sought help from Canada's foreign affairs department.

Spokesperson Ambra Dickie said the department is aware of the case but refused to give details, citing the Privacy Act. She did say that under Chinese law a detainee cannot make or receive calls, and visitors are banned except for lawyers and consulate officials.

Chen's detention follows that of another Canadian citizen, Huseyin Celil, 38, a Burlington imam who was arrested last March in Uzbekistan and extradited to China on charges of alleged terrorism, stemming from his political activities on behalf of China's Uyghur minority in the mid-1990s. In that case, Chinese officials have refused to recognize Celil's rights as a dual citizen.

In an Angus Reid survey of 1,175 Canadians released yesterday, 74 per cent believed the Canadian government should more aggressively protest the treatment of Celil and publicly condemn China's action; 72 per cent said Canada must place more emphasis on China's human rights and minority rights, ahead of its economic interests in the country.

According to the foreign affairs department's information booklet for Canadian travellers, when legal issues arise, consular officials do not: intervene in private legal matters; provide legal advice; post bail, fines or fees; get citizens out of jail; take possession of an abducted child; investigate a crime or death; or ask local authorities to give preferential treatment to Canadians.

"Your Canadian citizenship offers no immunity," the 29-page advisory warns.

"Never assume that the legal system of another country is the same as at home. `Innocent until proven guilty' is not a universal principle."

Canadians Assess Action on Huseyin Celil Case

2007-02-20T10:43:00.000-08:00

Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & Research

Canadians Assess Action on Huseyin Celil Case

February 19, 2007

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Many adults in Canada have a clear idea of the way their federal administration should deal with the case of Huseyin Celil, according to a poll by Angus Reid Strategies. 53 per cent of respondents think the Canadian government should protest the treatment of Celil, who is being held by Chinese authorities on terrorism charges, through regular diplomatic channels.

Conversely, 21 per cent of respondents want the government to publicly condemn China’s actions, even if it risks possible retaliation, while 12 per cent would let the Chinese legal system determine whether Celil is guilty.

On Feb. 9, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper responded to the statements of a Chinese official who warned Canada not to criticize the Asian country’s human rights record because it could harm bilateral relations, saying, "I would point out to any Chinese official that just as a matter of fact, China had a huge trade surplus with this country, so it would be in the interest of the Chinese government to make sure any dealings on trade are fair and above board." 72 per cent of respondents think Canada should place more emphasis on human rights and minority rights, regardless of the economic implications, in its long-term policy with China.

In relation to the Celil’s case, Harper added: "There are those in the opposition who will say, ‘You know, China is an important country, so we shouldn’t really protest these things (...) so maybe someday we’ll be able to sell more goods there.’ I think that’s irresponsible. I think the government of Canada, when a Canadian citizen is ill-treated and when the rights of a Canadian citizen need to be defended, I think it’s always the obligation of the government of Canada to vocally and publicly stand up for that Canadian citizen. That is what we will continue to do."

Celil immigrated to Canada in 2001, and was arrested and sent to China during a trip to Uzbekistan in 2006. China has treated Celil as a Chinese citizen, despite the fact that the country signed an agreement with Canada in 1997, where it pledges to consider any person travelling with a Canadian passport as a Canadian citizen, regardless of his or her place of birth.

Polling Data

As you may know, a dual Chinese-Canadian citizen named Huseyin Celil is being held by Chinese authorities on terrorism charges. The Canadian government believes there is no clear evidence that Celil, a minority rights activist, has committed any offences. Which of these statements comes closest to your own view?

The Canadian government should protest the treatment of Celil through regular diplomatic channels	53%
The Canadian government should publicly condemn China’s actions, even if it risks possible retaliation	21%
The Canadian government should do nothing and let the Chinese legal system determine whether Celil is guilty	12%
Not sure	14%

In terms of Canada’s long-term policy with China, where do you think we should place more emphasis?

On human rights and minority rights, regardless of the economic implications	72%
On the trading relationship, regardless of the human rights situation in China	28%

Source: Angus Reid Strategies
Methodology: Online interviews with 1,175 Canadian adults, conducted on Feb. 13 and Feb. 14, 2007. Margin of error is 2.9 per cent.
for PDF Report

With China, quiet diplomacy's a better bet

2007-02-18T12:14:00.000-08:00

With China, quiet diplomacy's a better bet

JEFFREY SIMPSON

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

An apparent misunderstanding clouds how Canadians view dustups over human rights. We seem to think that because a person holds a Canadian passport, he or she should automatically be accorded the full protection of the Canadian government, including consular access. Nothing could be further from reality in countries that do not recognize dual citizenship, such as Iran and Syria. If someone there is a dual national, the Canadian citizenship doesn't count.

China is a different story. In 1997, Canada and China signed an agreement whereby, if a dual citizen entered China on a Canadian passport, China agreed he or she would be considered a Canadian.

Confusion over Canada's ability and right to intervene on behalf of dual nationals is apparently not known by at least some of the dual nationals themselves, despite lots of information on government websites and documents. Some people seem unaware of their precarious legal status when travelling to their country of origin, expecting, if they get in trouble, that the Canadian government can, and will, come to their aid.

These days, attention is focused on the case of Huseyin Celil, who emigrated to Canada from China. On a trip to Uzbekistan, he was arrested and shipped to China. He has been held at an undisclosed location for about eight months.

If he entered China on his Canadian passport, he ought to have been afforded Canadian consular access. Chances are, however, the Chinese grabbed him, disregarded his Canadian passport, claimed him to be Chinese, and are telling Canada to butt out.

As part of their campaign of lecturing and hectoring the Chinese, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other ministers have been pressing the Celil case, demanding Canadian consular access.

From China's perspective, Mr. Celil isn't a Canadian. This observation does not defend the Chinese treatment of Mr. Celil, but it does explain some of the evident confusion. The Chinese consider it a bit rich being lectured to by Canada, a convenient place for refugees from Chinese justice to land and remain.

Lai Changxing fled China in 1999 as the alleged mastermind of a multi-billion dollar smuggling ring. He's not the first alleged crook from China and other countries to land in Canada and demand refugee status. Given our creaky refugee system, he certainly won't be the last.

Immigration Canada finally got a deportation order for Mr. Lai in June of 2006. A ticket was purchased for his return to China. At the last second, Madam Justice Carolyn Layden-Stevenson of the Federal Court stayed the deportation because Mr. Lai might be executed or face torture in China. More legal reviews are unfolding. The Chinese, reasonably enough, are peeved.

Mr. Lai's is not the only example of people wanted in China fleeing to Canada. A pair of Bank of China employees reached Vancouver in 2001 after allegedly stealing $57-million from a branch in south China. They have not been returned.

Beijing has formally asked Ottawa to arrest and deport a fugitive bank manager, Gao Shan, who is accused of embezzling $150-million from customers. No response.

Corruption is endemic in China. Western countries and businesses bemoan shady dealings, shakedowns, copyright violations, lack of property rights and payoffs. Yet, when China does go after someone for corruption, and that someone flees to Canada for safety, we don't act expeditiously to help. Instead, we lecture the Chinese about their human-rights record.

People in custody here are not tortured, as they sometimes are in China. Legal protections exist in Canada that eclipse anything in China. But from China's perspective, we lecture it about how it handles cases but we slough off its complaints about its nationals taking refuge in Canada.

The Harper government is very keen on finger-wagging at the Chinese. The chief finger-wagger is a junior minister, Jason Kenney, who used to be Mr. Harper's parliamentary secretary and saw him every day. His job in Cabinet is to win ethnic votes for the Conservatives.

Maybe the Harperites think finger-wagging is good domestic politics and a clever way to run foreign policy. It would help the credibility of this finger-wagging if Canada handled cases of concern to the Chinese with a little more dispatch.

It's also likely, although counterintuitive to neophytes in foreign policy, that quiet persistence wins human-rights cases more often than megaphone diplomacy.jsimpson@globeandmail.com

Who is Huseyin Celil?

2007-02-18T12:10:00.000-08:00

Who is Huseyin Celil?

Caught in the grip of Beijing

He is a very stubborn man, a pious imam and a proud Uighur. He's drawn the wrath of China's authorities who brand him a terrorist. Huseyin Celil is also a Canadian, jailed in an unknown prison in western China. And his case is straining relations between the two nations

GEOFFREY YORK AND OMAR EL AKKAD

URUMQI, CHINA and BURLINGTON, ONT. -- The Chinese justice system took its first crack at Huseyin Celil on a late summer day in 1994.

In most countries, his offence would not have provoked an arrest and a jail term. The young imam was accused of using a megaphone to amplify the call to prayers at his mosque, standard practice in most Muslim countries. In China, it landed him in prison.

The 25-year-old religious leader was jailed for 48 days, according to his family, the beginning of a cat-and-mouse game that would stretch over 13 years, two continents, and at least six countries. Even in the years he spent outside the country, China's interest in Mr. Celil never seemed to wane; it even led to regular searches of his relatives' homes long after he was gone.

Mr. Celil believed he had finally reached safety when he won protection from UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, and then entered Canada in 2001.

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But that refuge proved temporary. Today Mr. Celil languishes in an unknown prison in the far west of China, facing a heavy sentence or possible execution on terrorism allegations. His case has triggered a crisis in Canadian-Chinese relations.

A close look at Mr. Celil's life story, based on interviews and research by The Globe and Mail over the past several months in Canada and China, reveals a portrait of an intensely stubborn man who defied the will of the Chinese authorities for most of his life.

In China's eyes, Mr. Celil is not just a religious man from a farming community, he is a citizen accused of terrorism, and the definition of terrorism extends well beyond the realm of violence. Human-rights groups argue that peaceful protest or rebellion easily fall under the scope of what China considers a crime.

In the official Chinese view of the Celil case, Canada matters little.

"Of course, as a courtesy, we will brief your embassy officials [about what happens to Mr. Celil]," He Yafei, China's assistant minister of foreign affairs for North America, said this month, "but as a matter of courtesy, not as a matter of obligation."

China has so far produced no details to support the charges against Mr. Celil. Senior Canadian officials have repeatedly tried to gain access to the imprisoned Canadian, but China refuses to budge. It is on this point that Ottawa and Beijing have had trouble seeing eye-to-eye. Canadian officials have not questioned China's right to level charges against Mr. Celil, but they do object to being prohibited from seeing him.

All the Canadian government knows is that Mr. Celil is charged in connection with terrorist acts.

"I have never seen any documentation of direct evidence whatsoever to link Mr. Celil [to these acts]," Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said in an interview yesterday. In his strongest criticism yet of Beijing's handling of the Celil case, Mr. MacKay said Chinese authorities have shown "complete indifference to our desire, and more importantly [Mr. Celil's family's] desire to know about his well-being."

China regularly denies travel documentation to anyone seen as defying the party line on national unity. As such, Mr. Celil has never been allowed to carry a Chinese passport, his family and lawyers say. They add that he actively tried to renounce his Chinese citizenship upon his arrival in Canada, but China has no mechanism for people to do so.

China maintains a tight grip on Xinjiang, the predominantly Muslim region on the western fringes of the country. By refusing to kowtow to Chinese limits on religion, Mr. Celil doomed himself to a lifetime of conflict with state police and security agents.

Mr. Celil was born on March 1, 1969, on a small farm about 70 kilometres from Kashgar, a Muslim city in Xinjiang. He was the second-youngest of nine children. His impoverished parents grew cotton and wheat on a single hectare of farmland, earning an annual income of barely $250 (U.S.).

He and his family were members of the Uighur ethnic people -- the traditional majority in Xinjiang. The Uighurs, like the Tibetans, were resentful of Chinese dominance of their homeland. Like the Tibetans, they have been subjected to decades of repression by Chinese authorities who feared an independence movement.

Uighur activists have fought for greater autonomy from China, many of them seeking to regain the independence that the region briefly claimed in the 1930s and the 1940s after Muslim rebellions against Chinese rule. By the late 1980s, the conflict would erupt into sporadic violence, and China responded with a harsh crackdown.

At the age of 13, Mr. Celil graduated from primary school. But, unlike his eight siblings who stayed on the farm, Mr. Celil decided to continue his education by going to mosques to study the Koran. After three years at rural mosques, he moved to Kashgar to continue his religious studies for another two years.

It was an unusual move for a farm boy, revealing the defiant nature that continued throughout his life. He became the first in his family to study the Koran. "We were very proud of him," said his older brother, Sarmeti Celil.

By the early 1990s, still in his early 20s, Mr. Celil was an imam at a small mosque in Kashgar. He was also running a small clothing shop to earn a living.

The young imam was already attracting the attention of the Chinese police. He was ordered to obey Chinese restrictions on what he could say to the believers at his mosque, but his family says he sometimes violated them.

In the early 1990s, China was in the midst of a massive campaign against Muslim leaders in Xinjiang. To maintain control of the restive Muslim region, it imposed a series of rules on the mosques. Cameras were installed inside, while police agents attended the services and public servants were warned that they could lose their jobs if they attended.

At the peak of the conflict, terrorists detonated several bombs in the region, including on public buses. China blamed the Uighurs, and hundreds were rounded up and arrested, far more than the small handful who may have been involved in the violent attacks, human-rights groups say. China began to use the word "terrorist" to apply to almost anyone who advocated independence for the Uighurs.

After years of harassment from the police and a term in prison, Mr. Celil decided to flee the country. His family says he managed to leave China for the first time in 1995 to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the Muslim holy city. A few months later, after a brief return to Kashgar, he fled to Central Asia, making his way eventually to Kyrgyzstan, China's neighbour to the northwest, where he continued in the clothing trade and served as an imam in a Uighur mosque. Both the trips to Mecca and Kyrgyzstan, according to family members in Canada, were made using fake passports. China, they say, never granted Mr. Celil a passport; the first and last legitimate one he held was Canadian.

His family and his lawyer say that's why, in the two years he spent in Kyrgyzstan, the last nine months of which were in a jail cell, Mr. Celil used the name Guler Dilaver.

It was 1998, and the bazaars in Kyrgyzstan were thriving.

Mr. Celil was living in the capital city of Bishkek at the time, selling silk and clothes in the sprawling markets alongside other Uighur traders. There was a sizable Uighur community in the country, but almost all of them were considered illegal, so a black market in passports evolved within the community. According to relatives and friends who knew him at the time, Mr. Celil purchased one. The name on the Turkish document was Guler Dilaver, born in 1955. Using this passport, Mr. Celil lived in Kyrgyzstan for two years, working as a trader but also preaching Islam on the side.

In the middle of 1998, Mr. Celil was picked up by Kyrgyzstani police. According to statements made to the Uighur Canadian Association by both his former cellmate and former lawyer, Mr. Celil was charged with crimes, including "creating hatred among the people," a charge related to his religious sermons. He spent nine months in jail waiting for a trial. And when that trial finally came, his lawyer at the time alleges, there were Chinese officials in the courtroom watching. Both his lawyer and cellmate say he was eventually acquitted in December of 1998. The first thing he did upon his release, they say, is flee Kyrgyzstan.

During the same period, beginning in 1996, when Mr. Celil first left China, Chinese police were keeping a close watch on his family in Xinjiang. They searched the house almost every month, looking for religious texts and demanding to know his whereabouts, his family says.

His family did not find that surprising. Every family with a son who was trained at a mosque or who had fled the country was routinely raided and searched, they say.

"Of course we were angry about it, but they are the police and so we have no choice," Sarmeti Celil said. "We are afraid of the police. We suffered a lot of stress. Our lives were always interrupted. There was never anything they wanted in our rooms, so why did they keep searching us?"

Mr. Celil's first step on what would be an arduous journey to Canada began when he crossed the border from Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan. Still using a fake passport, he sought refuge with the Uighur community, eventually meeting a man in a local bazaar who not only gave him refuge, but introduced him to his daughter.

Kamila Telendibaeva and Mr. Celil were married a month later.

"He was educated," Ms. Telendibaeva recalls. "He knew the Koran, he knew the hadith," she said, referring to the Muslim holy book and the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Mohammed.

(Mr. Celil's first marriage, to a woman who lived near his family's farm in Xinjiang, had ended in divorce.)

But it was only after Ms. Telendibaeva and Mr. Celil were married that he told her he'd just finished a stint in jail and needed to flee the region. The honeymoon was barely over when, in 1999, Mr. Celil left for Turkey with three fellow refugees. In the summer of 1999, the four managed to enter Turkey through Syria. Ms. Telendibaeva joined them a month later.

The couple had their first child, Mohammad, while in Turkey. About six months after his birth, Mohammad's parents found out their son had serious health problems and need near-constant supervision.

Mr. Celil and his wife applied for refugee status with UNHCR. While the United Nations agency would have performed the initial background check on the couple, Canadian officials would have performed a number of security checks to ensure the refugees needed protection.

In the spring of 2000, their claim was accepted, and in October of 2001, they left for Canada after two years in Turkey.

It was during those two years that Guler Dilaver allegedly killed a man.

According to a letter released by the Uzbek embassy in London, Mr. Dilaver is wanted by Kyrgyzstan police for involvement in the "assassination of the head of Uighur society in Kyrgyz Republic on 28 March, 2000, and terrorist act against the state delegation of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China on 25 May, 2000." The Uzbek letter claims Mr. Celil and Mr. Dilaver are the same person.

A UNHCR spokeswoman said it would be highly unlikely for a refugee-in-waiting to travel outside the country in which he claimed asylum, since he would have no travel documents.

Mr. Celil's Canadian lawyer agrees. "It's just not realistic for this guy to have done that," said Chris MacLeod. "He would have forsaken his UNHCR status, left his disabled kid and wife, forged documents, made it there and back -- it's just not doable."

The Uzbek embassy letter also claims that Mr. Celil is on an Interpol wanted list. However, the Interpol referred to in the letter is the "Interpol National Central Bureau in Uzbekistan." Had Mr. Celil been on the Western Interpol list, Mr. MacLeod said, he would have never passed Canadian security checks. "Rest assured that [Canadian immigration officials] did not treat Huseyin any differently than any other Muslim man from Central Asia."

But the Dilaver allegations wouldn't surface for several more years. In October of 2001, Mr. Celil and his wife had other things on their minds, like their trip to Canada, the first country Mr. Celil could legitimately call home.

There aren't too many Uighurs in Halifax.

After a six-hour trip via Holland, Mr. Celil and his wife touched down in Canada for the first time in late 2001. "It was a bit boring, there was no one in our community," said Ms. Telendibaeva, who was pregnant with the couple's second child while in Halifax.

They studied English, Mr. Celil delivered food and occasionally cooked for an Arabic restaurant. But after 1½ years, they decided to move to Hamilton. There aren't too many Uighurs there, either, but the Turkish community, with which the couple share a common language, is much larger. They stayed there for two years before moving into a modest home in nearby Burlington.

It was a happy time for the couple. Ms. Telendibaeva became pregnant with their third child. Mr. Celil was back to studying, and volunteered part-time at a Turkish mosque. To top it off, the couple received their Canadian citizenship in November of 2005.

In an indirect way, that was when Mr. Celil's troubles really began.

By then, Ms. Telendibaeva had been away from her family for about six years. Her mother was sick and wanted to see her grandchildren. So in February of 2006, just three months after obtaining Canadian passports, Mr. Celil and his family flew to central Asia. They had no trouble getting visas to Kyrgyzstan, where Mr. Celil had been jailed in 1998, or Uzbekistan, where Ms. Telendibaeva's family lived.

In late March, Mr. Celil went with Ms. Telendibaeva's brother and father to a government office in Uzbekistan to ask for a one-week visa extension, so Mr. Celil's son could recuperate from a circumcision operation before travelling. After waiting for several hours, the three were confronted by Uzbek police, who told them they needed to speak with Mr. Celil. It was the last time Ms. Telendibaeva or her family saw him.

For five days, the family awaited word of Mr. Celil's fate. When nothing came, they went to a Canadian consular office. "[Canadian officials] asked why he was arrested," Ms. Telendibaeva said. "I told them, 'go find out.' "

But by the time Ms. Telendibaeva, pregnant with the couple's fourth child, had to go back to Canada in May, she knew virtually nothing about what was going to happen to her husband.

A few weeks after Mr. Celil's detention, Chris MacLeod received an urgent call at his home in Hamilton, outlining Mr. Celil's plight. Mr. MacLeod's wife is from Iran, and he had met Mr. Celil at social functions. Although it had nothing to do with the kind of law he normally practised -- he's a business-litigation expert -- he decided to take the case.

It didn't take long before Ottawa became acquainted with Mr. Celil's case. On his way to a meeting in Asia in the spring of 2006, Mr. MacKay met with the Uzbek ambassador. Mr. MacKay said the ambassador initially denied any knowledge of Mr. Celil's whereabouts, even though Mr. Celil was still detained in Uzbekistan at the time, but promised to look into it.

The Uzbeks did look into it. On June 26, they informed Canadian officials that Mr. Celil had been deported to China. Canadian officials would soon see just what China thought of the detained Canadian.

During a trip to Kuala Lumpur in July, Mr. MacKay tried to bring up Mr. Celil's case with his Chinese counterpart, Li Zhaoxing. Upon hearing the detained man's name, a puzzled look came over Mr. Li's face until an aide whispered something in his ear, Mr. MacKay recalled.

"Oh," Mr. Li said. "You mean the terrorist." For the rest of the meeting, that's how Mr. Li referred to Mr. Celil.

That meeting contrasted sharply with the one Mr. MacKay had with Ms. Telendibaeva after her husband's detention. By now heavily pregnant, the woman was, as Mr. MacKay saw, deeply distraught.

"The stress and strain was written on her face," Mr. Mackay said. "Both the consequences and impact [of the Celil case] were obvious from Day 1."

In October of last year, Prime Minster Stephen Harper visited Toronto. He was there to speak on crime prevention and other issues. But in the meeting room of a Marriot hotel suite, he met Ms. Telendibaeva and her lawyer. By then, Mr. Celil had already been sent to China. It was the first time anyone could recall a prime minister talking in person with the spouse of a Canadian detained abroad. The meeting was scheduled for 10 minutes; it lasted 40.

"That was the turning point," Mr. MacLeod said. "The Prime Minister could put a face to the file."

The meeting was perhaps the most direct sign that Mr. Harper was taking the case seriously. He brought Mr. Celil's case up with Chinese President Hu Jintao at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in Hanoi in November, and publicly stated he wouldn't put the countries' economic relationship ahead of human rights.

Information out of China in the months after Mr. Celil's deportation was scarce. Relying on second- and third-hand reports, his family first heard that he was to be executed for vague terrorism charges; then that he had been sentenced to 15 years, a rumour that turned out to be false; then that he had been granted another trial.

His whereabouts in China and the details of the charges against him are unknown. The first time anyone other than his prison guards got a look at him was about two weeks ago, when he appeared before a court in northwest China. Canadian consular officials didn't show up for the hearing, clearly angering Mr. Harper. The highest offices in Ottawa quickly instructed Canadian officials in China to trek northwest and try to meet with Mr. Celil and observe the next stage of his trial.

But as far as Mr. Celil's family knows, there is no next stage; his six-hour appearance in early February was the trial. The next time he shows up in a courtroom, they suspect, will be to hear his sentence.

These days, much of Ms. Telendibaeva's time is taken up with her children. Her oldest son needs a wheelchair and near-constant supervision; her youngest, born last summer, has never seen his father.

Mr. Celil's imprisonment has made life complicated for 29-year-old Ms. Telendibaeva in more ways than one. Her youngest son's birth certificate is proving difficult to obtain; he cannot inherit his father's last name without his father's signature. She had trouble getting six-month-old Zubeyir into the United States last month when she went to testify about Mr. Celil's case before the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, which gives policy recommendations to the President and Congress. Ms. Telendibaeva's mother arrived in Canada last year to help her daughter take care of the children, and renewing her visa is yet another challenge.

Sitting in the cramped living room of her small Burlington house, Ms. Telendibaeva speaks in broken but improving English. Welfare pays the $411 rent on a home that, since last year, has been visited by myriad journalists, politicians and activists from around the world. The walls are decorated with pictures of Mecca, religious scripture and a framed drawing of a mansion, a helicopter and a speedboat. Above the drawing are the words: "All I want is world peace and . . ."

Some time in the next month, Ms. Telendibaeva's husband will make another court appearance in China. His trial might continue, or he might be sentenced. Canadian officials might get to meet with him, or they might not. He might see his wife and children again, or he might not.

Asked what message she would send to her husband if she could, Ms. Telendibaeva paused, the incessant noise of children's toys blaring in the background."I don't know," she said finally. "We miss him."

The charges

Huseyin Celil's lawyer says he has been charged under two articles of the Chinese criminal code.

Article 103: "Whoever organizes, plots or acts to split the country or undermine national unification, the ringleader, or the one whose crime is grave, is to be sentenced to life imprisonment or not less than 10 years of fixed-term imprisonment; other active participants are to be sentenced to not less than three but not more than 10 years of fixed-term imprisonment; and other participants are to be sentenced to not more than three years of fixed-term imprisonment, criminal detention, control, or deprivation of political rights."

Article 120: "Whoever organizes, leads, and actively participates in a terrorist organization is to be sentenced to not less than three years but not more than 10 years of fixed-term imprisonment; other participants are to be sentenced to not more than three years of fixed-term imprisonment, criminal detention or control. Whoever commits the crime in the preceding paragraph and also commits murder, explosion, or kidnapping is to be punished according to the regulations for punishing multiple crimes."

*****

The plight of the Uighurs

Uighurs are Turkic-speaking Asians who live mainly in western China. Their history has been interwoven with that of China since they rose to prominence in the eighth century, when they established their first true state in Mongolia. Relations between the Chinese and the Uighurs were never entirely comfortable, however, and the Chinese considered them a barbarian people.

In fact, the Uighurs were advanced in art, architecture, music and medicine, and they practised a complex agriculture, using an extensive system of canals for irrigation. Their history had included adherence to shamanism, Manicheism and Buddhism, but at about the turn of the 10th century, they embraced Islam.

In 1911, after the Nationalist Chinese overthrew the Manchu dynasty and established a republic, the Uighurs, who had been forcibly annexed by the Manchu rulers, staged a series of uprisings in favour of independence. Two successful attempts to set up their own republic were overthrown by military intervention.

After the Chinese revolution in 1949, the Uighurs fell under Communist Party rule. The government flooded Xinjiang, the province in which most Uighurs live, with Han Chinese migrants; pushed the locals to learn Mandarin; and restricted the practice of Islam.

Relations between the modern Chinese state and its Uighur minority are still fraught. Beijing believes the Uighurs pose a separatist threat and Uighurs complain that oil and gas production in Xinjiang has been conducted at their expense, without just recompense. In the mid-1990s, Uighurs carried out widespread protests and even bombings against Chinese rule.

China, for its part, has launched a crackdown on the Uighurs, arresting and executing many in trials criticized by human-rights groups as unfair. China has long linked the region to terrorism, and has attacked what it says are terrorists and training camps in the province.

But while many Uighurs want greater autonomy for their region, few advocate the cause of independence that motivates a handful of extremist groups.

Human-rights observers believe China uses the idea of a Uighur terrorist threat as an excuse to crack down on all dissent. They accuse the government of carrying out arbitrary arrests, unfair trials, torture and religious discrimination in the region.

*****

Seeking a haven around the world

Huseyin Celil's globetrotting began with his efforts to escape first Chinese and then Kyrgystan authorities. His story ends up back in China, where he is now imprisoned.

Start

China

1994: Kyrgyzstan

1998: Uzbekistan

Turkmenistan

Iran

Iraq

Syria

1999: Turkey

Oct., 2001: Toronto

Halifax

2003: Hamilton

2005: Burlington

Feb., 2006: Moscow

March, 2006: Kyrgyzstan

June, 2006: China

Finish

Terrifying parallels

2007-02-13T19:42:00.000-08:00

Terrifying parallels

John Rennison, the Hamilton Spectator

Kamila Telendibaeva, With Mohammad, 7, Abdujelil, 3, Badruddin, 2 and Zubeyir, Six Months, Worries About Her Husband.

Man executed in China belonged to same minority group as Burlington detainee

By Dana Borcea
With Spectator wire services
(Feb 10, 2007)

The wife of a Burlington man imprisoned in China is reeling after hearing that another man, detained for similar reasons, has been executed.

Kamila Telendibaeva sat in the living room of her Burlington home and wept Wednesday as she listened to the choked words of the man's widow on Radio Free Asia.

"She was crying and couldn't speak very clearly," she said.

The woman's sorrow resonated with Telendibaeva, whose own husband, Huseyin Celil, was arrested last March while visiting his wife's family in Uzbekistan.

Three months later, officials there handed the former Hamilton imam over to neighbouring China, where he is accused of participating in alleged terrorist separatist activities.

Ismail Semed was reportedly shot to death on Tuesday after spending years in a Chinese prison in the same western Chinese province where Huseyin is being held.

Both belonged to the same Uyghur minority group whose members claim they have struggled for decades under repressive Chinese occupation.

China has long insisted that militants among the Turkish-speaking Muslim group are part of a violent separatist movement.

Telendibaeva said Semed's shooting came as a blow to the Uyghur community worldwide, who recognized him as an outspoken critic of the Chinese regime.

But it hit Telendibaeva especially hard.

"I couldn't sleep that night," she said. "I was thinking of my husband and about China and how they kidnap Uyghur people everywhere."

Telendibaeva does not fear that her husband will be killed. She maintains "the shame would be too much for China."

But she fears the abuses he is suffering. "In a Chinese prison, anything is possible," she says.

Her husband's arrest has meant the 29-year-old is raising the couple's four children alone. Their youngest, six months old, has never met his father.

News of Semed's execution came just days after Telendibaeva received her first update about Celil in months.

Relatives called on Sunday to say they had seen him during a brief court appearance where he told the court he had been tortured by captors who used sleep deprivation and threats in a failed attempt to make him confess to terrorist activities. It was the family's first indication he was still alive.

The absence of any Canadian officials during Celil's court appearance, along with claims he was tortured, have increased pressure on Canadian politicians to secure access to Celil.

In parliament yesterday, Wayne Marston, MP for Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, urged the Harper government to send an all-party delegation to China to advocate for consular access and a fair trial for Celil.

"We need to show China we are serious about protecting our citizens," said the NDP human rights critic.

Celil came to Canada as a refugee six years ago and became a citizen in 2005. Chinese officials have rejected claims he is a Canadian citizen and have denied Canadian diplomats access to him.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters yesterday his government would not be swayed by a Chinese official's recent comments that Canada's criticism of China's human rights record was hurting trade between the two countries.

dborcea@thespec.com

905-526-3214

Celil Won't Face Death Penalty in China: MacKay

2007-02-12T12:36:00.000-08:00

Josh Pringle
Sunday, February 11, 2007

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay says the Canadian Government is doing everything it can to convince China to respect the rights of Huseyin Celil.

The Burlington father of six is accused of terrorism, and China doesn't recognize his dual citizenship.

MacKay told CTV's Question Period that there's no reason why Canada cannot insist on respect for human rights, and still have trade with China.

MacKay says China needs Canada's natural resources and notes Canada has a huge trade surplus with China.

The Foreign Affairs Minister adds China has given assurances Celil won't face the death penalty in his trial, which is underway.

Harper warns China on human-rights trade threat

2007-02-12T12:35:00.000-08:00

y Randall Palmer Fri Feb 9, 5:58 PM ET

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned Beijing on Friday against trying to use trade as a lever to deflect criticism of its human rights record, including its treatment of a Canadian imprisoned in China.
He gave a blunt response to remarks by a Chinese official, published on Friday, that the two countries need to trust each other for their economic relationship to flourish.

"I would point out today to any Chinese official just as a matter of fact that China has a huge trade surplus with this country," Harper told reporters in the Atlantic port of Halifax.

"So I think it would be in the interest of the Chinese government to be sure that any dealings with Canada on trade are absolutely fair and above board."

Harper has for months sparred verbally with China over the case of Huseyincan Celil, a citizen of both countries and a Muslim imam whom China charges with terrorism.

The Chinese official in question is the assistant minister of foreign affairs for North America, He Yafei, who told Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper that Canada's trade and political relationships were falling behind.

"The economic relationship goes hand in hand with the political relationship," He Yafei said.

"We need to have a sound political basis of mutual trust for the economic relationship to flourish. That's why we need to work harder to improve mutual trust."

Opposition politicians in Canada have criticized Harper for his direct words over the Celil affair, but Harper told the news conference in Halifax: "Canada's trade with China has lagged for a very long number of years.

"It lagged under governments that were not prepared to speak out about human rights in any way, shape or form."

Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism, met He Yafei in Ottawa on Friday afternoon. Kenney told Parliament before the meeting that he would again raise Celil's case.

China has denied Celil access to Canadian diplomats and says they have no right to be present at court hearings. It has refused to tell them when he would appear in court.

Harper was unhappy to learn that Canadian diplomats were not present at a court hearing in Urumqi in northwestern China last Friday, and Kenney said two diplomats have now been dispatched to Urumqi on direct instructions from Harper.

Canada-China row intensifies over terrorism charges

2007-02-12T12:29:00.000-08:00

dpa German Press Agency
Published: Thursday February 8, 2007

Montreal- The Canadian government came under fire Thursday for its handling of a diplomatic row with China, after the family of a Chinese-Canadian held on terrorism charges said he had been abandoned by Canadian diplomats. Huseyin Celil, a member of the Muslim ethnic Uighur community who lived in the Xingjiang province of China, was arrested on terrorism charges in Uzbekistan's capital Tashkent while visiting family on March 27, 2006.

He was extradited to China three months later under an agreement between the Uzbek and Chinese governments.

Celil, 38, came to Canada in 2001 as a refugee after already spending several years in a Chinese prison, accused of dissidence. He became a Canadian citizen in 2005.

China does not recognize his Canadian citizenship and has said that the matter will be handled internally. They have reportedly been angered by Canada's attempts to have Celil released.

The Uighur community has been accused by China of plotting terrorist acts in an effort to achieve an autonomous Islamic state in the region called East Turkistan.

Celil's wife, Kamila Telendibaeva, who lives with the couple's four children outside of Toronto claimed early in the week that Celil has been abandoned by Canadian officials, after he made a court appearance in China last week but no consular representatives attended the hearing.

"They could have done more," Telendibaeva told the Toronto Star newspaper. "They missed an opportunity to see him."

At the court proceedings last week at Urumqi in Xingjiang province, Celil reportedly claimed that he had been tortured for several days in order to extract a confession that he was plotting terrorist attacks against China. He added that he had been badgered by interrogators, denied food and water and threatened with being burned and buried alive.

On Thursday, opposition parties hammered away at Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the Canadian parliament, calling him a "bumbling cold warrior" and charging that his aggressive approach towards diplomatic relations with China had compromised Canada's ability to assist Celil.

Harper deflected the criticism, saying that they had taken the issue up with the Chinese government on several occasions.

The row has been one of several between Canada and China over the past several months.

In April, China issued a forceful denial that they were engaging in industrial espionage in Canada, responding to allegations by Harper's government. China, in turn, was offended when Canada presented the Dalai Lama with honorary citizenship in September and by Harper's criticism of China's human rights record last November.

Harper was reportedly displeased by the lack of Canadian presence at the hearing and has ordered diplomats in the region to the courts. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay has reportedly also personally intervened.

The international human rights group Amnesty International has issued several alerts over Celil's status and treatment since his arrest last year.

Canadian consular officials in Ottawa would not comment on China's lack of recognition of Celil's Canadian citizenship or on reports that Celil had been denied access to diplomatic support by Chinese officials.

© 2006 dpa German Press Agency

China Executes Uighur Activist

2007-02-12T12:19:00.000-08:00

Friday , 09 February 2007

BEIJING — China has executed Uighur Muslim activist Ismail Samed on charges of "splitting the Chinese motherland" with rights groups and his lawyer slamming his trial as politically motivated and unfair.

"When the body was transferred to us at the cemetery I saw only one bullet hole in his heart," Semed's widow, Buhejer, told the US-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA) on Friday, February 9, Reuters reported.

Semed was executed in the far-west Chinese city of Urumqi, capital of the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang, at 9:00 am local time Thursday, February 8.

He was deported to China from Pakistan in 2003 and was sentenced to death October 31, 2005 by the Urumqi City Intermediate People's Court for "attempting to split the motherland" and "possessing firearms and explosives," Uighur sources told the radio station.

Sources close to the case said the charges were based on the allegation that Semed was a founding member of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a Muslim Uighur movement which Beijing has branded terrorist.

China has waged a harsh campaign in recent years against Muslim separatists struggling to set up an independent "East Turkestan" in Xinjiang.

The Uighurs are a Turkish-speaking minority of eight million whose traditional homeland lies in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in north-west China.

Xinjiang has been autonomous since 1955 but continues to be the subject of crackdowns by Chinese authorities, who have been accused by rights groups of religious repression against Uighurs in the name of counter-terrorism efforts.

Beijing views Xinjiang as an invaluable asset because of its crucial strategic location near Central Asia and its large oil and gas reserves.

Coerced

Buhejer said her husband had told the court that his confession had been coerced.

"They forced me," she quoted him as saying.

"…Previously, he had said his leg hurt, and his stomach hurt, and other parts of his body hurt, and that he needed medicine," she said.

The grieved widow said she was informed her husband was going to be put to death on Monday and was allowed to visit him briefly that same day, according to RFA.

"(It was) only for 10 minutes, we didn't have too much time to talk ...".

He told her to "take care of our children and let them get a good education".

Semed has a young son and daughter.

Two other Uighurs who testified against Semed were also executed, RFA quoted unnamed sources in the region as saying.

Unfair

The execution of the Uighur Muslim activist has drawn fire from human rights groups for lack of credible evidence on the charges.

"We don't think there was sufficient evidence to condemn him," said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based China researcher of Human Rights Watch.

"The death penalty was widely disproportionate to the alleged crimes ... his trial did not meet minimum requirements of fairness and due process."

The World Uighur Congress, an exile group, also said the prosecution had presented no hard evidence for a conviction.

"His trial, like most Uighur political prisoners' trials, was not fair," it said in a statement.

T. Kumar of Amnesty International in Washington also denounced the activist's execution.

He said "hundreds, if not thousands, were killed or seriously injured" in Xinjiang since February 1997.

Semed's execution came amid strained ties between China and Canada over the trial of an ethnic Uighur Canadian citizen in Beijing.

Huseyin Celil, 37, was arrested and jailed in China on terrorism charges in March 2006 and has not been heard from since.

Celil, who fled China a decade ago, arrived in Canada in 2001 as a refugee and became a Canadian citizen, but Beijing refuses to regard him as a Canadian citizen.

He was arrested in Uzbekistan in February 2006 while visiting his wife's parents and deported to China.

Celil's case was reportedly brought up during a meeting between Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Chinese President Hu Jintao on the sidelines of an Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hanoi in November.

Celil's family charged that he was tortured by police.

"They forced him to sign a confession, or he would be put in a hole and buried alive," his mother told the Canadian television Thursday.

Copyright © 1999-2007 Islam Online All rights reserved Disclaimer. Republished with permission

Canadian 'anger' at China trial

2007-02-12T12:11:00.000-08:00

Canadian 'anger' at China trial

Amnesty International says Uighurs are being wrongly persecuted

The Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is said to be "displeased" that Canadian diplomats did not attend the trial in China of a Canadian Uighur.

Huseyincan Celil, an ethnic Uighur and a rights activist, is on trial on terrorism charges in Urumqi in Xinjiang, home to a Muslim majority.

His wife told the BBC that relatives in the courtroom say he told the court he had been tortured by secret police.

Mr Celil also holds Chinese nationality and is being tried as a Chinese.

An unnamed official told the Reuters news agency that Canadian Foreign Minister Peter McKay had also said he was unhappy that Canadian diplomats failed to witness court proceedings.

But Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Helena Guergis said Canada was continuing to make representations to the Chinese authorities.

"Our requests for information and trial dates have gone unanswered, but embassy officials are in daily contact and they are en route to the province where Mr Celil is being held to deal directly with court officials and secure access to court proceedings," she said.

Mr Celil was an imam who left China in the 1990s. He arrived in Canada in 2001 as a refugee and was given Canadian citizenship. This is not recognized by China.

CHINA'S UIGHURS

Ethnically Turkic Muslims, mainly in Xinjiang

Made bid for independent state in 1940s

Sporadic violence in Xinjiang since 1991

Uighurs worried about Chinese immigration and erosion of traditional culture

He travelled to Uzbekistan last year, where he was arrested and then extradited to China on terrorism charges in March 2006.

His wife Kamila Telendibaeva held a news conference in December about her husband's plight.

"It's very sad. I need to get some information about my husband," she told reporters.

Amnesty International says Mr Celil is one of thousands of Uighurs being wrongly prosecuted by China.

Xinjiang, home to the Uighurs and other minorities, has long desired autonomy from Beijing, which regards the province as a home to terrorists.

China says agreement with Canada doesn't apply to Celil case

2007-02-08T23:39:00.000-08:00

Audra Ang, Canadian Press

Published: Thursday, February 08, 2007

BEIJING - The case of a Canadian activist jailed for alleged terrorist links will be handled according to Chinese law and is not subject to consular agreements, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Thursday.

Huseyin Celil made a court appearance last week in Urumqi, the capital of China's western Xinjiang region, without the presence of a Canadian diplomat - a violation of his rights as a Canadian citizen. Prime Minister Stephen Harper was reportedly demanding an explanation for what happened.

But China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Celil was a Chinese citizen and that "a consular agreement between China and Canada does not apply in this case."

Jiang would not confirm the report and telephones at the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court rang unanswered on Thursday. The Canadian Embassy in Beijing said it had no immediate comment.

Celil, a member of the Uighur minority group in Xinjiang, was born and raised in China. He became wanted in the country for his involvement in a campaign for the rights of his people. He was arrested in China and tortured, but escaped from prison in 2000 and fled to Uzbekistan and Turkey before reaching Canada, where he was given citizenship.

Celil's case has been a point of contention between the two sides.

China does not recognize his Canadian citizenship and Ottawa has been aggressively lobbying for his release - a move that has angered Chinese officials, as did Canada's granting of honorary citizenship to the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama.

The charges against Celil are murky. His family says he is being persecuted because he is a Muslim and a political dissident.

Chinese authorities have long maintained that militants among the Uighurs - Turkic-speaking Muslims - are leading a violent Islamic separatist movement in the region and are seeking to set up an independent state of "East Turkistan."

The separatist movement gained momentum following the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and the establishment of several independent and largely Muslim nations in the neighbouring region.

"He's a member of the East Turkistan Movement. He's a criminal," Jiang said during a regular briefing. "The relevant Chinese authorities are dealing with this issue in accordance with law."

China says consular agreement with Canada doesn't apply to Huseyin Celil case

2007-02-08T23:37:00.000-08:00

Published: Thursday, February 8, 2007 | 5:32 AM ET

Canadian Press: AUDRA ANG

BEIJING (AP) - The case of a Canadian activist jailed for alleged terrorist links will be handled according to Chinese law and is not subject to consular agreements, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Thursday.

But China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Celil was a Chinese citizen and that "a consular agreement between China and Canada does not apply in this case."

Jiang would not confirm the report and telephones at the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court rang unanswered on Thursday. The Canadian Embassy in Beijing said it had no immediate comment.

Celil's case has been a point of contention between the two sides.

The charges against Celil are murky. His family says he is being persecuted because he is a Muslim and a political dissident.

The separatist movement gained momentum following the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and the establishment of several independent and largely Muslim nations in the neighbouring region.

"He's a member of the East Turkistan Movement. He's a criminal," Jiang said during a regular briefing. "The relevant Chinese authorities are dealing with this issue in accordance with law."

Celil's desperate family had given up hope

2007-02-08T23:29:00.000-08:00

GEOFFREY YORK

Globe and Mail Update

URUMQI, China — When he was marched in handcuffs into a courtroom in this remote Chinese city last week, Huseyin Celil was like a man returning from the grave.

His family had been convinced that he was probably dead. For months, they had been hounding the prisons of Urumqi, begging for any news of him. They searched computer records and spoke to prison staff, desperate for any sign that the Canadian religious leader was still alive.

Nobody had any record of him. He had disappeared into the murky Chinese justice system, where more people are executed every year than in the rest of the world combined.

“My son had vanished and I thought he was killed,” said his mother, 75-year-old Shalehan Spander, in the first full-length interview given by Mr. Celil's family members in China since his arrest last year.

Last week, unexpectedly, came word of a trial date in this city in the far west of China. She went to the courtroom last Friday, along with 19 other relatives, and watched in with amazement as two policemen brought Mr. Celil into the room. “My heart was pounding,” his mother said.

Her joy was short-lived. A few hours later, her son testified that his Chinese captors had threatened to have him “buried alive” if he refused to sign a confession. She collapsed, sobbing, and had to be helped out of the courtroom by two relatives.

“When I heard his words, I was afraid we would lose him,” Mrs. Spander said on Thursday.

Last fall, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said China had made a commitment that the Canadian imam would not be executed for his alleged terrorist activities. But in Urumqi, where Mr. Celil is still believed to be held in an unidentified prison, his family has heard no such promise from anyone — not from the Chinese justice officials at the court hearing last Friday, and not from the Canadian diplomats who came to Urumqi this week after Prime Minister Stephen Harper criticized the Canadian embassy for failing to send anyone to the court hearing.

The two diplomats arrived on Wednesday to meet the family members. Yesterday, the diplomats held a meeting with a senior Urumqi court administrator, but were unable to extract any concessions from him.

The Canadian embassy in Beijing refused to allow the two diplomats to talk to the news media. But according to Mr. Celil's family members, who met with them last night, the diplomats were unable to persuade the court administrator to allow them to meet Mr. Celil. The Chinese official said the embassy could apply for a meeting, and the request would be considered if the reasons were deemed acceptable, but no promises were made, the family members were told.

The Canadian diplomats raised the issue of Mr. Celil's Canadian citizenship, but obtained no response, the relatives said.

“We all know that he is a Canadian citizen, and we can't understand why China denies it,” his sister said in the interview yesterday.

“We haven't seen him for 12 years. He is a Canadian citizen and China has no right to arrest him.”

The family has never assumed that Mr. Celil would be shielded from the death penalty. “We had tried to find him, but we had always failed,” said Mr. Celil's 49-year-old brother, Sarmeti Celil. “I thought he was not living in this world any more.”

He was relieved to see his brother alive in the courtroom last Friday. “But when I heard that he had been threatened with death, I felt very sad and upset,” Sarmeti Celil said. “We don't know if he will be alive or dead, or how many years he could be in prison.”

Asked if they fear for his life, Mr. Celil's mother and sister both answered with tears and sobs. “I haven't seen my son for 12 years,” Mrs. Spander said. “I just want to see him. Then I will not complain, even if I die now. But they refuse to let us meet.”

At the court hearing, Mr. Celil said that he was subjected to two weeks of intense all-night interrogation by Chinese policemen who vowed he would be “buried alive or disappeared” if he failed to sign the confession, the relatives said.

“It's terrible,” said Mr. Celil's 39-year-old sister, Heyrigul Celil. “I just wanted to cry. It's like a nightmare. We often cry because it seems hopeless. It's so unfair.”

Chinese officials have repeatedly rejected Canada's contention that Mr. Celil is a Canadian citizen. They even refuse to recognize the name on his Canadian passport. Instead they call him by his Chinese name, Yu Shanjiang, and they insist that he is a terrorist and a Chinese citizen.

“Yu Shanjiang is a key member of the East Turkestan Movement, which is an international terrorist organization designated by the United Nations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said yesterday.

“He was involved in a series of terrorist activities and he was an international fugitive,” Ms. Jiang said.

Mr. Celil is a member of the Uyghur minority, a Turkic Muslim people in the far west of China who have suffered decades of persecution from the Chinese government. China alleges that Islamic separatists are leading a violent campaign to set up an independent “East Turkestan” nation.

Mr. Celil fled China in the mid-1990s and travelled through Central Asia and Turkey before finally obtaining refugee status in Canada. He was an ordinary family man who read Islamic texts and worked as a trader in neighbouring Uzbekistan to provide income for his family, his relatives said.

“He read the Koran, but that doesn't make him a terrorist,” his sister said. “If he hadn't read those Islamic books and left China, none of this would have happened. We trust our brother and he would never attend any kind of terrorist activity. We've talked to him by telephone for the past 12 years and he never said anything about such things. He only asked about our children and their studies.”

Family claims Chinese-Canadian tortured in China

2007-02-08T23:24:00.000-08:00

Updated Thu. Feb. 8 2007 10:09 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

The family of a Chinese-Canadian imprisoned in China on terror-related charges spoke with CTV News inside the country, despite the fear that police would arrest them for talking to the foreign press.

Huseyin Celil's sister, mother and older brother met CTV's Steve Chao to speak out about his alleged mistreatment.

"He is being tortured by Chinese police," said Celil's mother. "They forced him to sign a confession, or he would be put in a hole and buried alive."

Celil himself has told a courtroom he was tortured by secret police. However, no Canadian envoys were in the courtroom Friday when Celil, a former Muslim leader from Hamilton, made the rare appearance. His sister and son attended.

In response to the report, the federal government said it dispatched diplomats to Urumqi, China, with orders they remain there indefinitely, The Globe and Mail reports.

Celil has been in Chinese custody on terror-related charges since March, when he was detained in Uzbekistan while visiting his wife's family, then sent to China under an extradition agreement between the two nations.

"He's just a loving family man who cares for his children and wants peace," said his mother.

"All I want is for a chance to see him one last time."

China has refused to recognize Celil's Canadian citizenship and has denied him access to Canadian consular officials. His Canadian lawyer has been unable to speak with him, and his wife Kamila Telendibaeva hasn't seen him in almost a year.

His family says the 38-year-old is being persecuted because he is an Uighur Muslim and a political dissident who fled his homeland in the 1990s.

The Uighur people have demanded autonomy, angering Chinese officials who have long accused members of the Muslim minority group of terrorism.

Celil's imprisonment has caused friction between Canada and China -- a nation whose human rights record has been publicly questioned by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, among others.

In fact, Harper pointedly spoke about Celil with Chinese President Hu Jintao while in Vietnam, where the two leaders were among 21 gathered for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit last November.

Harper also referred to Celil while en route to that conference.

"When a Canadian citizen is taken from a third country and imprisoned in China, this is a serious concern to this country," he said.

More recently, unnamed Canadian officials this week took to the media to slam Canadian diplomats for their failure to attend the hearing, and there were reports that Harper himself was upset at the handling of the case, The Globe reports.

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay's spokesman, Dan Dugas, told The Globe that MacKay had personally called the Canadian embassy in Beijing.

"The Chinese government is not co-operating with the Canadian mission in China and we aren't going to stop asking them for what's happening with Mr. Celil," said Dugas. He would not comment directly on claims Harper was angered that no official was in the court.

"I can tell you he is not happy either," Dugas said, referring to MacKay. "He's asking for answers. He wants to know what is being done and what the next steps are going to be."

With a report by CTV's Steve Chao in Urumqi, China

Detainee alive, tortured in jail, wife learns

2007-02-08T23:17:00.000-08:00

By Wade Hemsworth
The Hamilton Spectator
(Feb 8, 2007)

Kamila Telendibaeva is now sure of two things she didn't know last week.

One is that her husband is alive. The other is that Chinese authorities have tortured him in prison.

"I'm 100 per cent sure they did it," she said yesterday.

Members of the family called Telendibaeva in Burlington from China Sunday night to tell her they had seen her husband, Huseyin Celil, testify in court that he had been tortured by captors who used sleep deprivation and threats in an unsuccessful effort to force him to admit he had been involved in terrorist activities.

The captors had reportedly told Celil, "No one cares about you and no one knows about you." They also are said to have told him they would not give Canadian authorities any information about him until he signed a confession.

Telendibaeva had spoken to the same relatives on Friday shortly after her husband's appearance in court, but in that first call they had not revealed what Celil had said about being tortured. They had withheld the information, fearing the line was tapped.

Two days later, using a different phone, they told her that he had described being tortured over a period of 10 to 15 days, shortly after being transferred to Chinese custody from Uzbekistan in June. The relatives -- Celil's sister and one other family member Telendibaeva declined to identify -- are in Urumqi, where Celil's trial is being held. His next appearance is expected to be some time in March.

Details from the trial have been sketchy, but the allegations of torture have set off a new round of political fireworks over Canada's efforts to compel China to open the Celil file.

Diplomatic officials are now en route to the location where Celil is being held, with directions to stay there.

Foreign Affairs declined to comment beyond Tuesday's remarks by foreign affairs secretary MP Helena Guergis, who told Parliament that Canada continues to press Chinese authorities, but that requests for information and trial dates had gone unanswered.

The relatives who called Sunday told Telendibaeva that Celil had described threats of being burned unless he signed documents admitting he had been involved in terrorist activities. He insisted that he had nothing to do with terrorism -- a denial that is supported by his family here.

Celil is a Canadian citizen who came in 2001 as a refugee from northwest China, where he had championed the cause of the Muslim Uygur people -- one of China's minority populations who are struggling for religious freedom.

He settled in Hamilton and later moved to Burlington. Last March, while visiting his wife's family in Uzbekistan, authorities there detained him. Three months later, Uzbekistan handed him over to neighbouring China.

whemsworth@thespec.com

905-526-3254

China rejects concerns about Muslim activist

2007-02-08T23:12:00.000-08:00

Thu Feb 8, 5:13 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Thursday Canadian diplomats had no right to be present at a court hearing for a Chinese Uighur Muslim accused of terrorism who was awarded joint Canandian citizenship two years ago.

Yu Shanjiang, also known as Huseyincan Celil, fled China in the 1990s and traveled last year to Uzbekistan, where he was detained and then extradited back to China on terrorism charges.

China has not recognized his Canadian citizenship, obtained in 2005.

"Because Yu Shanjiang is a citizen of China, the consular agreement between China and Canada does not apply in this case," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a news conference.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who upset China last year with blunt criticism of its human rights record, was irritated this week that Canadian diplomats did not attend the court hearing in Urumqi, capital of the remote farwestern Xinjiang Uighur region, an official said in Ottawa.

China has waged a harsh campaign in recent years against what it says are violent separatists and Islamic extremists pressing for an independent East Turkestan in Xinjiang.

"Yu Shanjiang is a key member of the East Turkestan Movement, an international terrorist organization designated by the

United Nations," ministry spokeswoman Jiang said.

"He is suspected to have organized a series of violent terrorist activities."

Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs account for 8 million of the 19 million people in Xinjiang.

Protest marks Xinjiang 'massacre'

2007-02-07T02:23:00.000-08:00

Protest marks Xinjiang 'massacre'

Uighur activists accuse China of committing "cultural genocide" in Xinjiang [GALLO/GETTY]
Dozens of exiled Uighur Muslims have protested outside China’s embassy in Washington DC on the 10th anniversary of a massacre that some say was on a similar scale to events in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Protesters waved Uighur flags and chanted slogans calling on China to account for the many people they say were killed on February 5, 1997.

Human rights group say hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed and injured when police broke up a demonstration in the city of Gulja in China’s Xinjiang region.

Speaking at Monday's protest, Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled Uighur leader, said China continued to brutally oppress the Uighur people.

She said China had done nothing to explain the events at Gulja, now known as Yining, and some 8,000 there had "disappeared without a trace."

Missing

"Ten years have passed but the Chinese authorities have still not accounted for the innocent lives lost and those missing following the Gulja massacre," she said

External links

Amnesty International: Rebiya Kadeer's personal account of Gulja after the massacre
"What is worse is China continues to oppress our people."

Kadeer, formerly a successful Xinjiang-based businesswoman, was jailed by China for passing on state secrets.

She was released into exile in the US in 2005 after serving five years of an eight year sentence.

She has accused China of committing "cultural genocide" against the Uighur people as it seeks to develop the rich energy and mineral resources in the vast western region of Xinjiang.

Tortured

Xinjiang and the Uighurs

Xinjiang is officially an autonomous region

Has large reserves of oil, gas and minerals

Formerly a key area on the ancient Silk Road linking China to Europe

Beijing sees Xinjiang as gateway to resource-rich Central Asia

Turkic speaking Uighur population numbers around 8 million

Uighur activists say migration from other parts of China is part of official effort to dilute Uighur culture in their own land

Uighur separatists have staged series of low-level attacks since early 1990s

China says Uighur separatists are terrorists and linked to al-Qaeda
According to Amnesty International, hundreds if not thousands of people were killed or seriously injured in the Gulja crackdown after police moved to break up a peaceful demonstration by Uighurs in the city.

T. Kumar, Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific advocacy director, said many of those arrested were beaten and tortured, and dozens remain unaccounted for.

"No-one has been held accountable to this massacre and we are calling on the international community to take steps to investigate this abuse and other abuses against the Uighurs," he told AFP.

Xinjiang had a brief period of independence in the 1940s as the Republic of East Turkestan, before it became part of the People’s Republic of China.

Since the early 1990s there have been a spate of small-scale attacks blamed on violent Uighur separatist groups.

Beijing says the attacks stem from a rise in separatist sentiment in the region, fuelled by radical Islam linked to al-Qaeda.

But Uighur activists such as Rebiya Kadeer says such attacks come from only a tiny minority and most Uighurs want simply to have the right to practice their religions and customs freely.

They say China has used the attacks and its support for the US-led war on terror as a justification for suppressing Uighur culture, particularly the practice of Islam.

Al Jazeera is not responsible for the content of external websites

Canadian Finance Minister Begins China Trip Aimed at Boosting Trade, Mending Fences

2007-02-06T12:25:00.000-08:00

AP
Canadian Finance Minister in China
Wednesday January 17, 2:12 pm ET
By Alexa Olesen, Associated Press Writer

Canadian Finance Minister Begins China Trip Aimed at Boosting Trade, Mending Fences

BEIJING (AP) -- Canada's finance minister arrived in China to boost trade ties and mend fences amid a series of diplomatic spats with Beijing, but said Wednesday he would also raise human rights concerns during his talks with Chinese officials.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said it was his "duty to be frank" about Canada's concerns and said he planned to raise the issue of Huseyin Celil, a Chinese-Canadian being held in a Chinese jail for alleged terrorism links.

China does not recognize his Canadian citizenship and Ottawa has been aggressively lobbying for his release. His family says he is being persecuted because he is a Muslim and a political dissident who fled his homeland in the 1990s.

"We raise issues that we believe are important to Canadians," Flaherty said. "We believe in protecting the rights of Canadians around the world."

"At the same time we believe in growing the economy of Canada," he said. "We are a free trading nation. There is tremendous economic growth in China and there is increasing economic freedom in China and we can build on that relationship."

Flaherty said he planned to continue to press China on loosening its currency controls during meetings with his Chinese counterpart, Jin Renqing, and with the governor of the People's Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan.

"We've encouraged China to allow their currency to have more flexibility over time," he said. "They've indicated that they will do that over time. There is some increased flexibility now."

Critics say China's currency, the yuan, is artificially undervalued by as much as 40 percent.

Flaherty was also to meet with China's top insurance regulator, as well as banking and securities regulators and officials from its state planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission.

His seven-day trip to Beijing and Shanghai is part of a push by Ottawa to invigorate economic and trade relations with China since diplomatic ties floundered after the Conservative Party took power last January. Canada's Trade Minister David Emerson is also in Beijing this week.

Canada's campaign to have Celil released has angered Chinese officials, as did Canada's granting of honorary citizenship to the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama.

Conservative Party members of Parliament have also been vocal critics of religious persecution in China, particularly against members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

PM irked as diplomats miss activist's hearing

2007-02-06T12:22:00.000-08:00

Government says Canadian diplomats in Beijing and consular officials in Ottawa fumbled the ball

JEFF SALLOT AND GEOFFREY YORK

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

OTTAWA AND BEIJING — Angered by what he believes is lack of attention to a serious human-rights case, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is demanding an explanation for why no Canadian diplomat was present at the recent court appearance of a Canadian man accused of terrorist activities.

Both Canadian diplomats in Beijing and consular officials in Ottawa fumbled the ball last week when Huseyin Celil appeared in a Chinese court, a senior government official said Monday night in Ottawa.

The Department of Foreign Affairs “was supposed to have someone there. The Prime Minister is personally displeased that Canada did not have a representative apparently even trying to be at the trial,” the official said.

Mr. Harper is insisting that Canadian diplomats in China attend future court proceedings in Mr. Celil's trial, which opened Friday in the provincial city of Urumqi.

Canadian diplomats say they have been frustrated by the fact that the Chinese government will not recognize Mr. Celil's Canadian citizenship.

But even if Chinese authorities refuse to allow a Canadian diplomat into the courtroom, a representative should have been present for the opening of the trial as a signal of how seriously the Harper government is taking the case, the official said.

“Somebody in the department didn't understand how important this case is to the government,” another senior official said. “This case isn't going away.”

The two officials are well placed to understand Mr. Harper's concerns, but were not authorized as spokesmen.

Mr. Harper and other Conservative government ministers have raised the Celil case with the Chinese government personally several times. Trade Minister David Emerson raised it when he was in China last week.

Mr. Celil is a former imam at a mosque in Hamilton, who has been jailed at an unknown location in China for almost eight months.

When he appeared in court Friday in Urumqi, nobody from the Canadian embassy was present, according to Mr. Celil's family members.

“The Canadian embassy should have been able to attend the court proceeding,” said Charles Burton, a political scientist at Brock University and a former Canadian diplomat at the embassy in Beijing.

“It was not a closed proceeding, because Mr. Celil's family and friends attended. So I think our diplomats should have gone to the court in Urumqi that day and joined the Celil family in the courtroom. I assume that our embassy is in frequent contact with Mr. Celil's relatives, so surely they would have been informed that Mr. Celil would be appearing in court on Friday.”

Mr. Celil's wife, Kamila, heard details of the court hearing from relatives in China who attended.

“The Canadian government didn't send representation,” she told The Globe and Mail from Toronto on Sunday. “They were supposed to. They were supposed to send somebody from the Canadian embassy.”

Chinese authorities have refused to accept that Mr. Celil is a Canadian citizen. Since he was born and raised in China, they have insisted that he is a Chinese citizen. But this should not have prevented Canada from sending diplomats to attend the court hearing on Friday, Prof. Burton said.

“The embassy should have been in frequent contact with the Celil family to ensure that they would be informed if there were any developments in Mr. Celil's case,” he said.

“The embassy's non-presence in Urumqi at the time of the hearing is likely an indication that they were not sufficiently focused on this. ... Even if our diplomats were going to be refused entry at the courtroom door, we should have tried to get in and then waited there to be debriefed by the people who were allowed in.”

A spokeswoman for the Canadian embassy in Beijing said it is “in constant touch” with the Chinese authorities about the case.

The Uyghur Canadian Association, which talked to Mr. Celil's relatives in China, said the court hearing did not present any evidence against him and did not give any clue about the charges.

Prof. Burton said Canadian diplomats might be making a “strategic error” by relying too much on their traditional contacts with the Chinese Foreign Ministry, which is a relatively weak player in the Chinese system and actually has little influence on Mr. Celil's fate.

He said the embassy should be focusing instead on China's security and military agencies, which probably control Mr. Celil's case.

Touching Off Our China Crisis

2006-11-27T20:27:00.000-08:00

December 04, 2006

Touching Off Our China Crisis

A Canadian dissident in jail puts stress on our $35-billion relationship

CHARLIE GILLIS

On a warm Friday last March, after a hearty breakfast of fish cakes and salad, Huseyin Celil climbed into a car for a ride across the pockmarked streets of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. Then, in the midst of a family visit with his wife's relatives, the 38-year-old from Burlington, Ont., was off to a nearby passport office to extend the family's tourist visas -- an errand that shouldn't have taken more than an hour. So he left with few parting words, waving to his wife Kamila Telendibaeva and kissing his children before setting off down the road.

That last glimpse of her husband remains etched in Telendibaeva's mind. "He was wearing a dark suit, with a blue shirt," she recalls from her home back in Burlington. "Nothing special, just a suit like any other man in the city. But I've dreamed of him many times. And when I do, I see him in those clothes."

The rest of the day she'd prefer to forget. An hour passed without word from Celil, followed by another and another. Finally, around 10:30 p.m., her brother and father, who had accompanied Celil to the passport office, returned to her parents' house with shattering news: Celil had been taken away by Uzbek authorities who claimed to be apprehending a "fugitive" on behalf of the Chinese government. An ethnic Uyghur from the Xinjiang region in northwest China, Celil had spent much of his young life campaigning for the rights of his people in their Chinese-controlled homeland. He had fled the region in 1994, eventually coming to Canada as a refugee and obtaining citizenship here in 2005. But Beijing had been pursuing Uyghur activists abroad just as zealously as at home. If Celil believed his Canadian passport would protect him, he was tragically mistaken.

The Uzbeks, it turns out, have an agreement with China and other neighbouring countries to arrest each other's fugitives, and neither they nor the Chinese seemed impressed by Celil's Canadian papers. Six weeks after his arrest, he was deported to China, where he is now imprisoned on accusations of terrorism. The charges are preposterous, says Telendibaeva: "China makes up anything and everything to use against my husband." But she's in agony just the same. "We don't know about his health," says the 29-year-old. "We don't know whether he's alive or not because nobody's been allowed to see him. It's horrible."

Celil is not the first Canadian to encounter trouble while travelling abroad. But the extraordinary circumstances of his imprisonment have thrust the imam and part-time student into the national spotlight, making him the improbable centrepiece of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's trip last week to an APEC summit in Vietnam and the cause of a diplomatic incident. Harper's insistence on raising Celil during a planned discussion with Chinese President Hu Jintao led the Chinese to cancel the meeting -- then relent at the last minute and hear out Harper's lecture. So ended Canada's policy of obliging their Chinese counterparts by addressing China's shabby human rights record only behind closed doors -- a practice established in the mid-1990s despite the Asian giant's well-documented mistreatment of dissidents and minorities. The idea was that polite engagement on trade matters would inevitably lead to political reform. Once Chinese citizens got a taste of economic freedom, proponents argued, they'd soon demand political leverage to go with it.

To human rights groups, and to an increasingly vocal cadre of Conservative MPs, the Celil case has exposed the gaping flaws in that theory. The promise of future trade isn't worth much if you can't trust your partner to respect the basics of international law, they point out. And by last week's summit, Harper was using Celil's plight to drive their point home. "At present, we run a massive trade deficit with China," he told reporters after his meeting with Hu. "The fact of the matter is that neglecting human rights hasn't opened a lot of doors either, so obviously we don't think you get anywhere by shortchanging your values."

How flagrant has China's behaviour been? As of this writing, Beijing had refused numerous requests from Canadian officials for a consular visit as guaranteed under the 1961 Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic Relations. Nor were they willing discuss the case at the political level, at least, not until last week's fraught meeting between Harper and Hu. In fact, Beijing didn't even bother to notify it had taken a Canadian citizen because it refused to recognize his citizenship, says Chris MacLeod, Celil's lawyer in Hamilton, Ont. This too is a violation of international treaties China has signed.

As a result, Celil's whereabouts remain something of a mystery. The only news the family receives comes from his elder sister, Heyrigul, who still lives in Xinjiang and who fears the Chinese authorities are listening in on her communications. "She has to go out and make her calls from a street phone," says Telendibaeva, adding that the scant information Heyrigul does provide is not encouraging. Shortly after Celil was arrested, family members were told he had been accused of the assassination of a Chinese official in Kyrgyzstan in March 2000, charges for which he would likely face the death sentence. Then, in September, the family received word he had received a 15-year prison sentence in China, and was being held in Kashgar, a large city near the Kyrgyz border. This too came into doubt, though, after Heyrigul heard rumours from local police officers that her brother was in a police facility more than 1,000 km east of Kashgar, in the city of Urumqi. The prolonged guessing game has alarmed MacLeod. "It leads me to wonder whether there's something they don't want us to see," he says. "We're very concerned that he's come to some sort of harm."

In the meantime, a variety of commentators have cast doubt on the case against Celil, based on his own track record and the relatively peaceful history of the Uyghurs in China. A population of about 8.5 million moderate Muslims who speak a distinctive Turkic language, the Uyghur community is home to an active but largely non-violent movement to restore the independence of their homeland. The region they call Eastern Turkestan briefly enjoyed autonomy after 1933, before the Chinese occupied it in 1949 and officially absorbed it six years later. In recent years, says Mohamed Tohti, president of the Uyghur Canadian Association, the Chinese have treated the Uyghur movement as a threat to their control over a territory rich in oil and minerals. "They've banned all the things that define us," he says. "Our religion, our language, our right to associate. All we're asking for is the right to self-determination, to decide our own political future. Without independence, we won't be able to preserve the culture."

Celil's part in all this has been relatively benign, adds Tohti, the prisoner's long-time friend. He fled China in the early 1990s after being charged with trying to start a political party, but was never implicated in violence or extremist activity. Then, during a stay in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan in 1998, he was investigated for distributing Islamic-themed cassette tapes to truck drivers entering China. The tapes, however, were deemed by Kyrgyz authorities to be harmless material teaching the most basic tenets of the religion, and Celil was quickly cleared.

As for the stunning accusation of political murder, the Chinese have not named the assassinated official or disclosed any of the evidence of his death. Still, the Celil family has offered documentary proof he was in Istanbul at the alleged time of the killing -- including pictures of a meeting he had that day with Turkish government officials. "What they're claiming he did is basically impossible," says MacLeod. "He would have to be in two countries at once, or two countries inside of an hour." To Tohti, the idea of Celil carrying out an assassination is absurd. "Above all, Huseyin Celil is a family man," he says. "He has worked to promote dialogue between religious faiths, not extremism. The things he is accused of are not in his nature."

The more immediate question is how long Celil can endure prison conditions said to range from bleak to outright brutal. Rebiyah Kadeer, a Uyghur activist who once served in China's national parliament, spent eight years in an Urumqi jail for giving newspaper clippings to foreigners (the stories were deemed "state secrets"). Police interrogated her for a week when she first arrived, says the 60-year-old grandmother, who was later exiled and now lives near Washington. "They kept me awake for the first three days before I finally collapsed. They sent in shifts of people who demanded I confess, telling me I had to name other people." Speaking through a translator, Kadeer recalls her jailers beating two young Uyghur men bloody while she looked on; they said they'd continue the assault until she co-operated. They also forced her to sign confessions she was unable to understand, she says, before leaving her to a life in a solitary cell with dirty prison clothes. "I wasn't allowed to look at another prisoner. If I smiled at someone, they would take away my meals."

Kadeer was freed last year amid heavy diplomatic pressure from Washington, on the eve of an official visit to China by Condoleezza Rice. Now an advocate for Uyghurs abroad, she's urging Ottawa to intervene decisively on Celil's behalf, citing her own case as proof of the value of political intervention. The gravity of the charges against Celil -- and the length of his rumoured sentence -- suggest he may face even harsher treatment than she did, Kadeer warns.

This growing sense of urgency may explain why Harper decided to step into the fray. Three weeks ago, the Prime Minister quietly met with Telendibaeva and MacLeod at a downtown Toronto hotel, hearing out their case and inquiring after Telendibaeva's welfare. With four children, including a disabled seven-year-old son, she subsists on social assistance and desperately needs her husband's help. The couple's youngest child, a boy named Zubeyir, was born last August and has yet to see his father.

The Prime Minister hasn't said whether the family's woes justify offending a global power, or risking a $35-billion trade relationship -- at least not publicly. But if nothing else, his intervention suggests a time-honoured notion is regaining its place in Canadian foreign policy: that some provocations can't be ignored, and some values should never be measured in dollars and cents.

To comment, email letters@macleans.ca

...

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