December 11, 2000

Yesterday afternoon, Vancouver Chapters of Amnesty International, the Vancouver Association of Survivors of Torture (VAST) and Vancouver Falun Dafa co-hosted a Candlelight Vigil at the Vancouver Art Gallery to honor International Human Rights Day. In particular, the focus this year was on China's human rights abuses in regard to its persecution, detention and torture, sometimes to death, of practitioners of the meditative discipline of Falun Gong. Guest speakers at the event included Burnaby/Douglas MP Svend Robinson, and Vancouver East MP Libby Davies. Svend Robinson noted that even though both Amnesty International and the United Nations have documented a serious deterioration in China's human rights record, Canada has remained "shamefully silent." Instead, human rights have been sacrificed "on the altar of corporate profit to promote trade" by Jean Chretian and the Liberal government. Given that ". . . Kun Lun Zhang, a respected Canadian University professor has been imprisoned in a labour camp for one reason only, that he is a practitioner of Falun Dafa," Robinson was emphatic that ". . . it is time to call China to account for its human rights violations."

In regard to the recently announced February Team Canada trade mission, Robinson was insistent that " . . . if China refuses to heed the voices speaking out, the trade mission must not, must not go ahead."

Libby Davies agreed with Robinson that instead of expressing outrage over the situation, the current Canadian government has made China's human rights violations "subservient to trade and economics." Robinson and Davies have joined the growing chorus of Canadian MPs including Liberal MP Mauril Belanger, Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde, Canadian Alliance MP Scott Reid and Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, a former associate of Professor Zhang at McGill University, who are demanding that Foreign Affairs Minster John Manley intervene in the situation by negotiating the release of Zhang and calling for an end to the persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners in China, a persecution which clearly violates international human rights agreements.

Cotler is a world-renowned human rights lawyer who has broken rank with the Chretian government. He was quoted in the Ottawa Citizen as saying that Canada needs to assert its "moral leadership" in the world by co-sponsoring a United Nations resolution that condemns China's human rights record if Beijing refuses to release Zhang. A formal UN censure in the form of the so-called "China resolution" that will be debated in March by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva could disqualify China from World Bank financing and otherwise seriously interfere with its international relations.