Canada's parliament votes to label China's persecution of Uighurs as genocide

Canada is embroiled in a political issue with China right now. They're holding a Huawei exec named Meng Wanzhou at the request of the US, who are investigating Huawei for violating sanctions against China[1].

China retaliated by arresting two Canadians without apparent cause[2]. They're been in jail for two years.

The Conservative party put forth this motion for a vote as a move to put Trudeau's Liberal government in an awkward place: they would either condemn China's treatment of the Uighurs and make the Michaels/Meng Wanzhou situation more painful, or they wouldn't and would appear to condone genocide.

FWIW I suspect Trudeau and the Liberal party do believe Uighur treatment to be genocide (I do). But stating it publicly would make life even more difficult for them.

1- https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46462858

2- https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/two-michaels-mark-two-jailed-y...

> By the common understanding of the word, it is not. Just as “homicide” means killing a person and “suicide” means killing yourself, “genocide” means killing a people. China’s persecution of the Uyghurs is horrific: it has locked up perhaps 1m of them in prison camps, which it naturally mislabels “vocational training centres”. It has forcibly sterilised some Uyghur women. But it is not slaughtering them.

[...]

> By accusing it of genocide instead, in the absence of mass murder, America is diminishing the unique stigma of the term. Genocide should put a government beyond the pale; yet American officials will keep doing business with the regime they have branded genocidal. Future genocidaires will take comfort

Just calling it genocide and not doing anything about it really weakens what the term means.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/93wj78/canada-is-torturing-i...