A Canadian parliamentary committee has advanced a motion to offer special immigration procedures to Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities fleeing Xinjiang, while lawmakers in the United Kingdom moved to ban medical imports from the region in western China.
This is according to a report by Radio Free Asia (rfa).
"Members of the Standing Committee on Immigration and Citizenship in Canada’s House of Commons unanimously approved a motion on Thursday that includes the issuance of temporary resident permits and single journey travel documents to people without a passport," rfa said.
The measure will allow displaced Uyghurs who face risk of detention and deportation back to China to seek refuge in Canada.
In April, Canada said it would introduce new immigration policies, including a now granted Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel, for Ukrainians who want to seek refuge in Canada.
The Canadian government is bound to respond to the committee’s motion within 30 days.
"The process will include a debate in the House of Commons and a vote on the motion," a Conservative lawmaker Garnett Genuis said.
Genius said the motion reaffirms a recognition of the ongoing genocide of the Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in China.
He added that it calls for recognition of the vulnerability of refugees from Xinjiang.
Other than Canada’s Parliament, the U.S. and the U.K. have also declared that China’s policies targeting Uyghurs make up for genocide and crimes against humanity.
In March 2021, Canada, the U.S., U.K. and E.U. sanctioned Chinese officials and companies over human rights violations in Xinjiang.
"Memet Tohti, an executive director of Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project in Canada, said his group lobbied with committee and parliament members to press the demand that Ottawa 'treat the Uyghur refugees fleeing the Chinese genocide just like the Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war'," rfa said.
Tohti said that the passage of the motion with the support of four parties means that the group now has a unanimous consensus in the Parliament on resetting Uyghur refugees in Canada.
Further, rfa heard that the U.K. legislature passed an amendment banning the government from purchasing health products from the Xinjiang region where China is accused of slavery.
The Modern Slavery Amendment was incorporated into a larger health bill to prevent U.K.'s National Health Service from buying products made in Xinjiang.
Ian Duncan Smith, the conservative MP who pioneered the amendment’s passage, welcomed the ban.
The U.K. director of the World Uyghur Congress, Rahima Mahmut acknowledged that the Uyghur activist group has for years challenged the government to take meaningful action against Beijing’s genocide in Xinjiang.
She told rfa the amendment is the most significant piece of U.K. legislation addressing the Uyghur crisis so far.
“Once the bill comes into law, the Chinese government will no longer be rewarded with million-pound contracts for Uyghur slave-made healthcare products, as they have done throughout the COVID-19 pandemic."
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