Hong Kong Watch Canada testifies at Foreign Affairs Committee on Bill C-281, the International Human Rights Act

On Thursday, the policy advisor of Hong Kong Watch Canada, Katherine Leung, testified as a witness at the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs for the study of Bill C-281, the International Human Rights Act. 

Ms. Leung’s testimony outlined the importance of using Magnitsky sanctions to hold human rights violators accountable, the need for the Government to publish a list of prisoners of conscience on whose release they are working, and the necessity of taking Chinese Communist Party propaganda off Canadian airwaves. 

“We have no shortage of reasons to sanction Chinese and Hong Kong officials. In fact, parliamentarians have repeatedly called on the Government to do so in the form of letters and committee reports.

Sanctions are a tool for Canada to hold human rights violators accountable. Tools only work when they are used. From what we have seen, there is an inconsistency in the Government's approach. It has introduced a Magnitsky sanctions regime which it claims is world-leading, yet it refuses to use it,” said Ms. Leung to the Committee on the issue of sanctioning Hong Kong officials.

Regarding the Bill’s provision to ban state-controlled media from regimes who are committing genocide or human rights violations that resulted in sanctions, she said, “an important point to raise is who is on the receiving end of this propaganda – in Canada, it is largely Chinese immigrant communities that are consuming this. To allow CGTN to continue operating on public, state-owned Canadian airwaves, is to allow Beijing’s propaganda to misinform, propagandize, and have direct influence on Chinese-speaking Canadians.”

The full testimony can be watched here.