Chinese-Canadians say spies have been monitoring and intimidating them
Appendix 8 of the Matas-Kilgour revised report (organharvestinvestigation.net) is a report by the Edmonton city police, which recommended charging two diplomats from China's consulate in Calgary with inciting hatred against the Falun Gong community, contrary to provisions of our Criminal Code. The pair appeared to think that Canada was really part of China.
David Kilgour
May 8, 2007
For Mehmet Tohti, it was the Canadian equivalent of the midnight knock
on the door. The phone rang in his Mississauga apartment shortly before
bedtime, and on the other end of the line was his mother Turmisa, who
lives in the northern Chinese city of Karghilik. The sound of her voice
was itself a surprise: Tohti, a Uyghur activist who escaped China in the
late 1980s, hadn't seen his mother in 16 years, and the two had rarely
spoken by phone. But they hardly had time to exchange greetings before
she handed the receiver to a man who -- dispensing with all
pleasantries, himself -- began scolding Tohti about his political
activities.
The official, who identified himself only as a member of China's
infamous Overseas Affairs Commission, had a laundry list of
instructions. Tohti was to cease efforts to draw sympathy in Canada to
the Uyghurs -- the oppressed, largely Muslim population of Xinjiang
province that has become a thorn in Beijing's side; he was to stop
spreading allegations of cultural genocide against the People's
Republic; most importantly, he was not to attend an upcoming conference
in Germany where Uyghur groups from around the world planned to form an
international congress. "We have your mother here, and your brother,
too," he added cryptically, noting that police had driven the pair some
260 km to a regional police headquarters in Kashgar to help deliver
Beijing's message. "We can do whatever we want."
Indeed. In the three years since that night, the 43-year-old Tohti has
had enough brushes with China's long-armed security apparatus to
conclude Beijing's agents are still doing much as they please -- not
just in China, but in Canada, too. The incidents have ranged from more
such phone calls, he says, to one unsettling encounter last October, in
which three Chinese men spent a night watching his suburban home through
the windows of a black SUV. The men hung around until about 1:30 a.m .,
says Tohti, and for days afterward he couldn't sleep. After complaining
about the incident to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, as
well as the Department of Foreign Affairs, he moved into a condominium
with 24-hour surveillance. "I no longer feel secure in Canada," he told
federal officials.
He's not alone. The Taiwanese community, Tibetan Canadians and Falun
Gong practitioners have all reported incidents of spying or
intimidation to federal authorities in the past five years. And while
Ottawa has reportedly issued stern warnings to the Chinese embassy,
nothing seems to work. With the 2008 Summer Games in the offing, some
critics believe Beijing is actually ramping up covert activities
against Canadian-based dissident groups to help mute criticism of its
human rights record during the Olympics.
Those anxieties rose further in March when Jiyan Zhang, an accountant
who worked at the embassy and the wife of a Chinese diplomat, told
reporters that staff there had formed a special unit to collect
information on groups like the Uyghurs, Tibetans and Falun Gong. Zhang,
herself a practitioner of Falun Gong, also smuggled out a document
suggesting that the embassy had mobilized a letter-writing campaign to
the CRTC in hopes of scuttling the licence application of a
Chinese-language TV station it considered anti-Communist. Her husband
has been sent home to China in disgrace, but Zhang, who's now claimed
refugee status, has kept up her offensive. "I just hope to show that
the Chinese embassy was doing bad things," she told the Ottawa Citizen.
"I wanted to reveal their lies."
Not everyone, however, is feeling so brave when it comes to tweaking
Beijing. Several Chinese expatriates who last week recounted harrowing
tales of threats and intimidation asked not to be identified in
Maclean's for fear of reprisals against relatives they left behind.
Others worried about their own safety -- though there are no known
incidents of violence by Beijing's agents on Canadian soil. Nearly all
agreed that Canadians need to be better informed about the espionage
going on inside their own borders.
Uyghurs, in particular, have been feeling vulnerable in recent months.
The surprise arrest of Huseyin Celil, the Burlington, Ont., imam who
was sentenced to life in a Chinese prison last month, reminded many how
closely Beijing follows their movements. Friends of Celil point out that
the 37-year-old participated in several Uyghur demonstrations in front
of the Chinese consulate in Toronto, where consular staff photographed
or videotaped him each time. Then, in June 2006, he was arrested at
China's behest during a visit with his in-laws in Uzbekistan -- a
capture so smoothly executed that Celil's advocates believe it must
have orginated on Canadian soil. "I've maintained all along that the
reason Huseyin came on the radar of the Chinese authorities was because
of activities here," says Chris MacLeod, Celil's Canadian lawyer.
"Obviously, they monitored him and they knew he was travelling. They
certainly don't want other Uyghurs speaking publicly about the cause. I
guess this is their way of sending a message."
Since then, members of the 450-strong Uyghur community have meditated
nervously on their own stories of intrigue -- some of them as obvious
as the surveillance of Celil, some of them much more subtle.
Sixty-five-year-old Salim (not his real name) recalls a September 2004
phone call from the embassy's visa office inviting him to Ottawa to
celebrate the 55th anniversary of the Communist revolution. None of his
fellow Uyghurs received the same call, he says, and given his family's
long history of defiance toward Beijing, it was easy to impute sinister
motives. "They put my son in prison for life," says Salim, whom fellow
Uyghurs regard as an elder statesman of sorts. "They've had an arrest
warrant out for me since 1997. Why would I want to celebrate anything
to do with China?"
Salim's mind raced. Did they plan to arrest him during a party on
embassy property? Would they poison him? He now suspects Chinese
officials merely hoped to use his presence at the party to blunt
criticism they're prejudiced toward Uyghurs. In any case, they had
quite cleverly demonstrated they knew where he lived, and they didn't
seem to hear his polite refusals: the official called him back three
times and a few days later a written copy of the invitation appeared in
his mailbox. "I don't mind telling you I was afraid," says Salim.
Efforts to silence those who use the Internet to mobilize dissent
against China have been equally crafty, and effective. Kayum Masimov, a
Montreal-based organizer for the Uyghur Association of Canada, began
receiving emails in 2004 that were so ingeniously disguised as messages
from other Uyghurs in Canada that at first he never suspected trouble.
Then, after a friend opened an attachment to one, Masimov's hard drive
quickly filled with digital dreck. "I've already lost one laptop over
this," says the 33-year-old. "Now, if I get a message from someone I
know, I phone and ask if they sent it." Proving a connection to the
embassy here is probably impossible, Masimov concedes, but he's not the
only one who's been hit.
The tactic is known as a "virus assault," and it's become a daily hazard
for Chinese dissident groups working in Canada. The messages feature
content and senders too unique to have come from garden-variety
troublemakers, and are so disruptive to communication that some groups
now speak only in person, or by phone. Dermod Travis, executive
director of the Montreal-based Canada Tibet Committee, submitted two
infected emails his group received last fall to a private company for
analysis, and has since been advised that the messages originated in
China. The emails were tailored to look as though they were sent by
Tibetan activists, he says; one even contained bogus registration forms
for an upcoming international conference. The question is how the
saboteurs obtained his group's address list. "This goes beyond the
generic stuff you see in standard viruses," says Travis. "It would
require some effort on the part of someone here in Canada."
All this said, it has taken Canada's spy agency an uncommonly long time
to point a finger at Beijing, or any other meddlesome government. For
years, CSIS has stuck to its policy of not naming countries it
investigates, while victims who report incidents often never hear back
from the agents who take down their stories. As late as last week,
spokeswoman Barb Campion was sticking to the script, saying CSIS does
investigate reports of foreign interference but avoiding specific
mention of China. (As for leaving complainants hanging, Campion cited
operational reasons: "Individuals come to us all the time, but much of
what we find is going to be classified and we're not going to be able
to share it.")
CSIS director Jim Judd was a bit more forthcoming before a Senate
committee on Monday, acknowledging that Chinese operatives account for
nearly half the service's domestic counter-intelligence work. "It's
surprising, sometimes, the number of hyperactive tourists we get here
and where they come from," he said, referring to the use of visitors as
spies. But he provided little detail about the breadth and scope of
China's activities, and even less in the way of reassurance. "As one of
my foreign counterparts said once, in this business you spend most of
your time worrying about what you don't know," he said. "That would
certainly apply here as well."
The disclosure sent a buzz across Parliament Hill -- and presumably
through the Chinese embassy (repeated calls by Maclean's to the mission
went unanswered, as did calls last week to Foreign Affairs Minister
Peter MacKay). But to those paying close attention, Judd was merely
corroborating numerous anecdotal reports of Beijing stretching its
tentacles throughout Canada's expatriate Chinese community. In June
2005, for instance, a former Chinese security official who sought
asylum in Australia alleged that the Chinese government had roughly
1,000 spies operating in this country -- many of them monitoring
Chinese students and scientists who are here on visas. Less than a
month later, Guangsheng Han, a 52-year-old former security official,
came forward in Ottawa to say Beijing was cultivating informants here
to keep watch on dissidents. "They're very interested in what happens
in the ethnic Chinese community in Canada," he told Canadian Press.
"They pay a lot of attention."
Uyghur activists, meanwhile, proudly wield a 1996 directive leaked last
year from the Chinese Communist Party, which appears to show that
China's strategy of interference and infiltration is at least 10 years
old. The memo, known as Document No. 7, instructs officials in foreign
missions to "establish home bases in the regions or cities with high
Chinese or overseas Chinese populations" and to "collect information on
related developments." "Be especially vigilant against and prevent by
all means the outside separatist forces from making the [Uyghur]
problem international," it says.
None of this should come as a surprise to those who follow China on the
world stage, says Yuen Pau Woo, president of the Vancouver-based Asia
Pacific Foundation. "All countries have an interest in monitoring the
activities of overseas nationals," he notes, "as well as activities
that affect the homeland." And while the relatively large size of
Canada's 1.6-million strong Chinese community make it an attractive
espionage target, it is by no means unique in having Chinese spies on
its soil. The good news, says Woo, is that China is quickly learning
the value of charm and spin. "They're becoming more sophisticated," he
says. "They're starting to use the tools of soft power."
Perhaps. But those who feel the eyes of Beijing upon them today say that
China has a long way to go. The case of Celil is an extreme example of
how determined Communist authorities are to silence their critics, they
note, and while the kinds of tactics they appear to have at their
disposal are by no means an option for Ottawa, nipping them in the bud
will almost certainly require equal resolve. The first step, of course,
is admitting we have a problem.
To comment, email letters@macleans.ca
http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20070514_105173_105173
M.Tohti
Uyghur Canadian Association
www.uyghurcanadian.org
info@uyghurcanadian.org
416 825 8641