New Delhi: While Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has vociferously condemned Chinese courts sentencing two of its citizens — Michael Spavor and Robert Schellenberg — it has not once intervened or called for the release of Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen and an Uyghur activist who has been detained in China for almost 14 years now.
Spavor, who was convicted of spying for a foreign entity and illegally providing state secrets to other countries, was given an 11-year prison sentence this week, a day after another court confirmed the death sentence for Schellenberg, on charges of drug smuggling.
Prime Minister Trudeau issued a statement Thursday, saying his country “will not rest until they are safely brought home”.
In contrast, there has been near-total silence from the Canadian establishment on Celil.
Celil was arrested by the Uzbek government at the request of Chinese authorities in March 2006, a year after he got his Canadian citizenship. He had travelled to Uzbekistan to visit his wife’s family. He was handed over to China in 2007.
According to an opinion piece in the Toronto Star, China had an eye on Celil even before he left the country for Canada in 2001, and was once arrested for teaching the language, faith, and culture of the Uyghurs.
The piece claimed the Canadian government was privy to the news of his arrest but never intervened before he was handed over to the Chinese.
The piece added that his wife Kamila Telendibaeva and their four children have not heard from Celil since 2017, when Chinese President Xi Jinping authorised crackdowns on the Uyghur population, which is primarily based in Xinjiang, and other mostly-Muslim ethnic groups claiming that all religions in China should be Chinese in orientation.
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‘A forgotten Canadian’
Unlike the two other Canadians detained and another three Canadians of Asian origin — Ye Jianhui, Xu Weihong, and Fan Wei, who were given death sentences within two years of the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, Chief Financial Officer of Huawei, by the Canadian government — there is very little knowledge about Celil’s case.
And both Canada and the United States, which have been actively challenging these verdicts against Canadians, have never raised a demand on his whereabouts, let alone call for his release.
In February 2020, Dominic Barton, the Canadian ambassador to China, stated that he could not meet Celil (in prison) as “he was not a Canadian citizen”.
François-Philippe Champagne, the then minister of foreign affairs, had to correct the fact and Barton subsequently apologised to Celil’s family for the mistake.
Mehmet Tohti, an Uyghur-Canadian activist and a founding member of the World Uyghur Congress, called Barton’s error troubling and told The Globe and Mail that the demand for the release of the two Michaels (the other being Michael Kovrig who was arrested with Spavor) overshadowed Cecil’s case.
“He’s not only forgotten, he’s not on the agenda,” Tohti said.
(Edited by Arun Prashanth)
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