National Security & Defense

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/may-24-2023-episode-transcript-1.6854784

May 24, 2023 Episode Transcript | CBC Radio Loaded
As It Happens
May 24, 2023 Episode Transcript


CBC Radio · Posted: May 25, 2023 12:10 PM PDT | Last Updated: May 25

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…Canadian Uyghur rights activist is agreeing to disagree. Mehmet Tohti is the Executive Director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project in Ottawa. He says he has first-hand experience of what the Chinese government will do to push Canadians around. We reached him in Ottawa.

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MT: I left China, escaped from China in 1991. Since then, I have been totally isolated from my own parents and the siblings. And the Chinese government did not allow them to apply a passport to come to Canada physically. And I am unable to go, as you know, because of my activism. And that is not the end of the story. When I started to campaign for the release of the Canadian citizen of Uyghur origin, Huseyin Celil, when he was abducted in Uzbekistan in 2006, the Chinese government started to intimidate and harass me by a phone call and just a threat directly from Chinese security police from the region. And the years passed, and the Chinese government never stopped that harassment and the threat. I was called by a Chinese state police on January 16th. Again, threatening me to stop my activity in Canada because my mother already paid the price, and my two sisters already paid the price. And then my brothers disappeared, and their children disappeared. And I had only one cousin left, the brother of my mother in Ürümqi. And so, the threat and intimidation is widespread among Uyghur Canadians. And in this free country, we are living under the shadow of transnational repression.

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