Written by: Aidan Jonah
Why was Canada trying to take Uygurs who were deported from Thailand to China? A failed anti-Chinese government policy, triggering a later cost of nearly $1 million CAD, is the elephant in the room.
British newspaper The Guardian reported that Canada and the US had offered to take in all 48 Uygurs held in Thailand, before 40 were deported back to China at the beginning of March.
While readers would often associate the United States with shenanigans around China and its Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), Canada has made its own noise on this front.
Canada itself was the first country whose parliament declared that China’s treatment of Uygurs in the XUAR was a “genocide”, back in 2021. Allowed to drive the lead-up to this vote, was a CIA-funded Uygur separatist organization, Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project (URAP). URAP went on to accuse a Canadian Senator who opposed a follow-up ‘genocide’ motion in Canada’s Senate of “acting as a spokesperson for China rather than for Canada”.
Rather than face any criticism for such comments towards a Canadian Senator, URAP was given attention by the Canadian government, as a 2023 memorandum stated that for URAP:
“Successes include: the building of a Uyghur parliamentary friendship group; Canada’s recent commitment to welcome 10,000 Uyghur refugees; and the hearing conducted by the Subcommittee on International Human Rights in 2020 and the subsequent parliamentary motion recognizing the Uyghur genocide.”
This section of the memorandum was referring to a non-binding motion in Canada’s parliament, passed unanimously in February 2023, which demanded that Canada should:
“urgently leverage Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s Refugee and Humanitarian Program to expedite the entry of 10,000 Uyghurs … over two years starting in 2024 into Canada.”
And with much bravado, with the support of then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the efforts to bring in 10k Uygur ‘refugees’ began in 2024.
But there’s one big problem, the original 2022 motion (passed in 2023) was premised on the idea that:
“a genocide is currently being carried out by the People’s Republic of China against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims”
That’s a problem, because if you want to find a large of refugees, it usually follows unpopular crackdown or a ‘genocide’. As this author has detailed for this outlet, there has not been such a situation in China’s XUAR.
And without an actual genocide, or even just a cultural genocide, should it be any surprise that Canada has struggled mightily to match its Uygur “refugee” goal?
Nearly $1 million CAD, to help only a few Uygur “refugees”
Canada only bringing in its first Uygur “refugee” in December 2024, when the stated aim was 10,000, would be a major embarrassment on its own.
But the embarrassment was higher than most would realize, because before the first “refugee” entered Canada, The Canada Files discovered a contribution indicating that the CIA-funded URAP had received nearly $1 million CAD to assist Uygur ‘refugees’ who’d come to Canada. After this story broke, Canada’s immigration department tried to hide the contribution from the public and URAP has never answered questions around it.
By this point – November 2024 – zero Uygur “refugees” had been brought to Canada.
Canada’s immigration department further escalated in January 2025, by refusing to provide the final copy of the contribution agreement signed between them and URAP, for the near $1 million CAD contribution.
URAP’s Executive Director, Mehmet Tohti, has a questionable past around Uygur refugees. This author earlier explained that:
“URAP’s Executive Director, Mehmet Tohti, has previously demanded that Canada allow in Guantanamo prisoner Anvar (Ali) Hassan, a then 34-year-old who “fled China to live and train in a camp in Afghanistan in 2001” and was ‘later caught in the hills of Pakistan’, who ‘admitted to military training in Afghanistan’ with the motivation of fighting the ‘oppressive Chinese government’”.
Tohti was also a co-founder of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), another CIA-funded organization, serving as Vice-President twice, and currently is an elected Director of the Legal Committee for WUC.
To this day, what URAP has done with the nearly $1 million CAD, given only a few “refugees” have come to Canada, is still an open question.
And as such, it is no wonder that Canada would be so interested in getting some of the 48 Uygurs in detention in Thailand, almost all now deported back to China.
Given how determined Canada is to boost URAP and other anti-China separatists – by funding them, showing them off at a conference and helping them network with each other, and defending them when sanctioned by China – Canada would want to get more Uygur “refugees” into the country to show “progress” in their ‘refugee saving’ program, while also easing the pressure on URAP to answer questions on what the money they’ve been given is being spent on.
Are these Canadian shenanigans against China in the ordinary citizen’s interest? Of course not, but the imperial machine has its mind made up to go after China, and the citizen’s interest is of little concern to Canada’s government.
Note: This article was originally published in CovertAction Magazine.
Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, an independent news outlet covering Canadian foreign policy with a strong focus on Canada-China relations. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
