Canada: China's treatment of Uighurs 'genocide'
Canada's House of Commons has voted overwhelmingly to declare China's treatment of its Uighur minority population a genocide.
The motion - which passed 266 to 0 - was reinforced by all opposition parties and a small number of lawmakers from the governing Liberal Get together.
Prime Minister Justice Trudeau & most members of his cabinet abstained.
The motion makes Canada just the next country after the USA to identify China's actions as genocide.
Lawmakers also voted to move a great amendment asking Canada to call on the International Olympic Committee to go the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing "if the Chinese federal government continues this genocide".
Mr Trudeau has up to now been hesitant to label China's activities against the Uighur minority found in Xinjiang a good genocide, calling the word "extremely loaded" and saying additional evaluation was needed before a decision could possibly be made.
Just one person in his cabinet, Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau, appeared on parliament for the vote. Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Garneau explained he previously abstained "with respect to the government of Canada".
Speaking prior to the vote, opposition innovator Erin O'Toole explained the move was essential to mail a "clear and unequivocal signal that we will operate for human rights and the dignity of individual rights, even if this means sacrificing some monetary opportunity".
In an start letter to Mr Trudeau earlier this month asking him to "endure China", Mr O'Toole noted the new banning of BBC World Media from China - a decision that followed a BBC survey alleging systematic rape, sexual abuse and torture in China's "re-education" camps in Xinjiang.
Monday's non-binding movement marks the latest increase in Canada-China relations, which have soured over recent years.
At the weekend, China's ambassador to Canada Cong Peiwu told the Canadian Press that the action was "interfering in [China's] domestic affairs".
"We firmly oppose that since it operates counter to information," he said. "There's nothing like genocide going on in Xinjiang at all."
Rights groups believe that China has detained up to million Uighurs in the last couple of years in what the express defines seeing that "re-education camps".
BBC investigations advise that Uighurs are actually being used as forced labor.
Canada's symbolic motion does not lay out next steps, but says the Canadian federal government must follow the business lead of its US neighbors.
Both current and former US Secretaries of State, Anthony Blinken and Mike Pompeo, have declared that China's policies against Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in its western Xinjiang area constitute genocide.
