Relations between Canada and China have been in tatters since Meng Wanzhou, vice chairman of Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, faced extradition proceedings in Canada in connection with a false statement case in the United States.
Global Affairs Canada’s latest travel advisory warns that people with family ties or ethnic ties to Xinjiang may be at risk of “arbitrary detention. According to the advisory, which was updated Sunday local time, Chinese Communist authorities are detaining ethnic minorities and Muslims in the Xinjiang region without due process, and the practice is becoming more frequent. The recommendation also refers to reports of extrajudicial detention and forced labour camps. The recommendation also refers to the detention of Chinese family members of Canadian citizens. (By Derek Fong)
The Canadian government also said that tensions in the Xinjiang region make it difficult to obtain accurate information and that there is a chance that Chinese Communist authorities could impose curfews and restrictions at any time, with potentially extremely short notice periods.
Canada-China relations have been in tatters since Meng Wanzhou, vice chairman of Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, faced extradition hearings in the United States in Canada in connection with a false statement case. Shortly after Meng was detained by Canada in December 2018, China detained Canadian citizens Kang Mingkai and Spavor in the same month. The two were interrogated behind closed doors in Beijing and Liaoning in March on “espionage” charges, respectively. Relations between the two countries were further aggravated when Canada joined the United States, Britain and the European Union in late March to sanction Chinese officials over human rights issues in Xinjiang.
In addition, Reuters reported that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) named China and Russia on Monday, saying that foreign spying and interference in Canada last year had reached levels not seen since the Cold War.
A CSIS annual report on the last year said, “Both hostile intelligence services and ‘foreign threat actors’ (FTAs) working on their behalf sought to exploit social and economic conditions created by the pandemic in order to gather valuable information.”
The report adds, “China, Russia, and other foreign countries continue to covertly collect Canadian political, economic, and military intelligence through targeted threat activities in support of their own national development objectives.”
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