Chinese police kill 6 suspects in Xinjiang

Chinese police kill 6 suspects in Xinjiang

Exile group claims they were shot after surrendering



Aug. 31, 2008

BEIJING - Chinese police shot dead six people suspected of involvement in a wave of violence in the far western region of Xinjiang and an exile group claimed they were killed after surrendering.

Police reportedly launched an operation to arrest nine people late Friday after a series of attacks in August killed 33 people and threatened to overshadow the Olympic Games.

Xinjiang — an isolated region that borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and six Central Asian nations — is home to China's ethnic minority Uighurs, who say they are repressed by the Chinese government. China has long said that insurgents are leading an Islamic separatist movement in Xinjiang.

Police encountered nine suspects in a corn field near the city of Kashgar on Friday night, , the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The suspects had knives and tried to resist arrest, putting up a "desperate struggle" and wounding one policeman. Three wounded suspects were arrested, it said.

One of the three captured suspects later died in a hospital as did a local militia man who was wounded, the People's Daily newspaper said on its Web site Sunday.

But an Uighur exile group accused police Saturday of gunning down the suspects, members of the Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, after they surrendered.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Germany-based World Uighur Congress, said armed police surrounded the corn field and asked the Uighur men through a loudspeaker to surrender themselves, promising to provide them with lawyers.

The suspects did not resist arrest, but police with submachine guns opened fire after they had surrendered, Raxit said in a statement Saturday, citing accounts by local Uighurs.

An official from the Xinjiang government — speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media — confirmed six suspects were shot dead. But he denied the men were killed after surrendering and called the allegations "nonsense."

Human rights groups say China has a history of using security threats in Xinjiang as an excuse for much broader crackdowns on human rights in the region.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26476003/

'Pray for me,' Celil asks in first letter from prison

'Pray for me,' Celil asks in first letter from prison

May 22, 2008

OTTAWA — For the first time, imprisoned Canadian Huseyin Celil has spoken out in his own words about his 2½-year ordeal in the Chinese legal system, saying he is quickly losing hope that he will ever see the outside world again.

In a three-page letter sent from prison and obtained by The Globe and Mail, Mr. Celil asks his mother to forgive him for all the suffering he has put her through.

"Do not cry for me too much," he writes in the Uyghur language. "I cannot stand this unjust world - I am supposed to serve you as your son; I am supposed to help you under your knees all day and night, but now you are helping my son and taking care [of my children] for me. You have raised my two children as you did all my brothers and sisters. This is painful."

The letter is dated March 10 and appears to have originated from a prison in Urumqi in northwestern China.

It is important not only because it represents a rare firsthand communication from the imprisoned Canadian, but also because Mr. Celil's family has recently been denied access to him in prison and are not sure where he is being held.

The Globe reported in late March that Mr. Celil's whereabouts in China had become unknown to Canadian officials and his family.

The Globe also reported that the Chinese ambassador in Ottawa had been called into the Department of Foreign Affairs to discuss the situation. According to a Foreign Affairs spokesman at the time, Canadian officials asked the ambassador that Mr. Celil's family be allowed to visit him in prison, "if only on humanitarian grounds."

His supporters believe he is being kept away from visitors until the Beijing Olympics end later this summer. It is unclear whether the letter was written before he was moved to another prison.

Mr. Celil, a member of the Muslim Uyghur minority in China, was travelling on a Canadian passport when he was arrested in Uzbekistan two years ago and eventually handed over to Chinese officials. Beijing accused him of terrorism and sentenced him to life in prison in April of 2007. He and his supporters have always denied the charges against him.

Even though Mr. Celil is a Canadian citizen, he has not been given access to Canadian officials. Ottawa went to great lengths to press Beijing on his case in the months leading up to his sentencing. But while the case garnered much news-media attention at the time, it has largely dropped off the public radar. Chinese officials have privately and publicly made it clear that Beijing will not change its position on the case.

In his letter, Mr. Celil maintains that he has done nothing wrong. But it is clear that he has little information about how his case has progressed outside the walls of his prison. In a portion addressed to his wife, Kamila Telendibaeva in Canada, he asks her to tell officials in Canada's Chinese embassy about his situation.

"So far for nearly two years I have not seen anyone from Canada," he writes. "I am a citizen of Canada and I belong to this great country."

Mr. Celil said he has no idea what has been going on in the outside world since his arrest. He added that he has written to his mother twice but received no reply, even though "I can feel from the bottom of my heart that you came to Urumqi many, many times" to try to visit. He asks whether his wife is coming to visit him, and says he dreams about her every day.

But the majority of the letter is addressed to Mr. Celil's mother, and reflects both the prisoner's affection for her and his increasing resignation to the possibility that he may spend the rest of his life in jail.

"Please forgive me if I have ever done anything wrong to you in my life," he writes to his mother. "Please forgive me if I have ever spoken loudly in front of you.

"It is only God who can help me meet with all of you."



Translation of Huseyin Celil letter

Globe and Mail Update
May 22, 2008 at 4:10 AM EDT

Best Greetings of God over you


From Huseyin Celil

My Lovely, gracious mother, how are you doing?

I caused you tremendous suffer and pain. You spent whole of your life with my suffer. As a your child I only beg your pardon and pray for me.

I missed you very very much. If they allow, if your financial situation permits, I would be feel like myself in heaven with your one more visit along with my two children. Last time I was blessed seeing my sister when she visited me.

I missed my mother and two son from the bottom of my heart. I really want to see them one more time. I wrote twice to you but received no reply so far. Maybe you did not get my letters or the letter you send did not reach me.

I can figure out the reason. How about my all relatives? Are they fine?

How about my son Abdusemi, Abdugheni and Esma?

How about my lovely wife Kamila and my children in Canada? (naming his all children one by one) . were you able to continue to contact with my wife Kamila and my children in Canada? How are they doing? What is my wife Kamila saying on my bad luck? Please ask Kamila, let her continue to do something for me in Canada. I am now loosing my all hopes of returning back to my country and see my wife and children. I can not sleep by thinking my old handicapped son. Because I am in Prison now I am not aware of any thing about outside world. My days are passing with hoping of a miracle that can save me from this place and gives me chance of hugging my wife and children in Canada. I am worrying for my children all days scratching my head as a hopeless and helpless person. When I met with my sister last time she mentioned me in brief that Kamila would be coming to see me?

Any thing new about this? Please if you know any thing let me know with any possible ways.

Dear Mother, you are getting old. Please take care of yourself well, even though this is an empty wish, Please rest well. Do not cry for me too much. I could not stand this unjust world. I am supposed to serve you as your son, I am supposed to help you under your knees all day and night, but now you are helping my son and taking care of them for me. You have raised my two children as you did all my brothers and sisters. This is painful. This is indigestible.

Dear my sisters and brothers, Please take care of my mother well. Every thing can be found, not father and mother. We have only one mother who are precious for all of us. Think of me for a second, now I can do every thing to be able to see the face of my mother, I am thinking all day and night to serve her for a second, but I can not. Therefore you should know the value of our mother when she is alive and take this golden opportunity to serve her.

Please send my heartfelt greetings to my wife Kamila if you have a chance to talk with her on phone.

Dear Kamila, if possible please contact with the Embassy personal in Beijing and let them know my situation. So far nearly two years I have not seen any one from Canada. I am citizen of Canada and I belong to this great country.

If I am in jail know it is just because I got a bad luck. Otherwise I have not done any thing wrong in my whole life. I really want to talk with some one from our Embassy in Beijing, I would like to tell them that I am absolutely innocent person. I want them to know my story. Why they are not coming to see me? I want them to ask for me why I am in jail for so long? What went wrong? What is the reason? I want to know all of these. I could not find any one here to listen me. But our Embassy personal can ask these questions on my behalf.

I am always dreaming of Mehmet Salih and my wife Kamila. I can not pass any single minute without thinking them. So many things presses me all the time. In one hand my children in Kashgar grown up without seeing my fatherhood. Another hand my children in Canada living without knowing what has happened to their father. Also my mother is suffering and crying for me all day and night. Worst thing is I can not do any thing for my mother, children, wife and relatives except pray in my heart.

I pray my mother all the time. She has raised my children without me since years. I can not pay it back in my whole life. When I was about to be a person who can do some thing for my children and family, I ended up in jail for nothing. Please pray for me. That is the only thing that I can ask from you.

I can feel from the bottom of my heart that you came to Urumqi many many times and spent days and night for the hope to see me, visit me. I am grateful, I am thankful for the hardship you have experienced in cold and hot, snow and rain. I know you are doing it. I know the thin heart of my mother and my children and all of my relatives.

I hope my paper is enough to pour ( I think it meant to express) my heart.

I would like to put each and every name of my relatives on this paper and send my greetings from my heart.

He names all of his relatives one by one.

Dear mother, Please forgive me if I have done any thing wrong to you in my life. Please forgive me if I even have spoken loudly in front of you.

It is only God who can help me to meet with all of you.

Respectfully

Huseyin Celil

March 10, 2008

No: 5th subdivision of 6th district, Number 1 prison in Urumqi

Huseyin Celil


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Celil, Guantanamo Bay and the rejected refugees

Celil, Guantanamo Bay and the rejected refugees

June 2, 2008

OTTAWA — Languishing behind prison walls somewhere in China, Huseyin Celil may never know how much impact he has had on the continuing plight of a group of his brethren held in a controversial prison on the other side of the planet.

The Globe and Mail has learned that the Canadian government came very close to accepting as refugees a group of Uyghur prisoners from Guantanamo Bay - men who were captured by bounty hunters in Pakistan six years ago, handed over to American soldiers, shipped off to Guantanamo and then almost immediately found to have done nothing wrong.

But Ottawa pulled back at the last minute, in large part, sources say, because of fears of what would happen to Mr. Celil, also a member of China's Uyghur minority, if the transfer went ahead - Beijing has lobbied furiously to keep any nation from accepting the Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Interviews with government and legal sources, as well as documents obtained under the Access to Information Act, show the political negotiations that went on behind the scenes, as the U.S. desperately tried to get rid of men it now admits pose no threat.

Those men might well be Canadian residents today if it weren't for another imprisoned Canadian whose release Ottawa is unable to secure.

POLITICAL FAVOURS

In 2002, a few months after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, bounty hunters across the region were rounding up anyone they could hand over to the American military, usually for a handsome sum - an arrangement the military frequently accepted.

Among those men were a group of almost two dozen Uyghur men captured in Pakistan. The Uyghurs are a Muslim minority group in northwest China. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Beijing has used the war on terrorism as leverage in its continuing crackdown on the Uyghurs, some of whom have fought fiercely for independence from China.

The men were handed over to the U.S. military for about $5,000 a head, and eventually flown to the newly established detention facility in Guantanamo Bay.

It quickly became clear to U.S. officials that, if the Uyghurs harboured hatred against any government, it was that of China, not the United States. The men denied allegations of wrongdoing, and it wasn't long before then-secretary of state Colin Powell was looking for a country to take the prisoners.

"The U.S. recognized very early on that these men were captured by mistake,' said J. Wells Dixon, an attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, who represents some of the Uyghurs.

Although some of the detainees were cleared for release from Guantanamo Bay as early as 2003, it was not until 2006 that any of them actually left the naval base.

The timing of the men's release was coincidental at best. Some of the prisoners, who had earlier been declared "no longer enemy combatants," had filed court cases arguing the U.S. could no longer detain them. A U.S. court of appeal was set to hear arguments in the case on May 8, 2006. Three days before the hearing was scheduled, the five men were released from the base and flown to Albania. The court case was dismissed, and Washington avoided a ruling on whether what was happening in Guantanamo was legal.

Albania, which has no Uyghur community to speak of, was far from an ideal location for the men. Indeed, the U.S. had quietly (and unsuccessfully) lobbied about 100 countries to take the prisoners. Among those countries was Canada, a place the prisoners' lawyers had hoped would agree to take them in. Albania was the lone outlier among those countries, and not for purely benevolent reasons.

"It appears to us that they were sent to Albania because Albania owed the U.S. a political favour," said Mr. Dixon. "Albania wants very much to become a part of the European Union. ... As soon as [the Uyghurs] were sent to Albania, it was shortly thereafter that the U.S. announced support for Albania's efforts to join the European Union."

It is also believed that the U.S. paid millions of dollars as part of the transfer agreement.

But the factors were not the same with other countries. Many did not want to take men who were in any way associated with the controversial detention facility. Many questioned why Washington wouldn't allow the men to settle in the U.S. (something that would have had serious political and legal implications on the already controversial Guantanamo Bay facility).

But perhaps the most significant factor in the widespread refusal to accept the men had to do with Beijing's lobbying. The Chinese government made it clear that it considers any such transfers to be violations of international law, and wants the men instead sent to China. But the U.S. has refused to send the men back because of the likelihood they would be tortured. In an ironic twist, the U.S. was now put in a position where it had to protect men it once accused of heinous crimes from potentially heinous treatment.

Judging by how many nations refused to take the prisoners, China's lobbying appears to have been at least partly successful. But in Ottawa, Beijing's position carried even more weight.

CRACKING UNDER PRESSURE

On May 18, 2006, a U.S. delegation met with senior political staff at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Citizen and Immigration Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Department of Justice and the Prime Minister's Office. The purpose of the high-level meeting was to discuss the Uyghurs.

It was not the first time the U.S. had asked for Canada's help. Washington had sent specific requests about the Uyghurs to Foreign Affairs, CIC and the Privy Council office in October, November and December of 2005.

Documents obtained under the Access to Information and Privacy Act show that Canadian officials at the May meeting indicated the prisoners would likely be inadmissible under Canadian immigration law, but did not make a firm decision.

"There has been no decision by the Government of Canada as to whether to formally discourage or encourage the US from making formal referrals for resettlement pursuant to the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement," a briefing note reads.

Under the agreement, anyone seeking refugee protection must make a claim in the first country they arrive in - be it the U.S. or Canada - unless they qualify for an exception. The situation may be more complicated in the case of Guantanamo Bay, a place that Washington has gone to great lengths to treat as a separate entity from the U.S.

"[The Department of Foreign Affairs] will need to consider the bilateral and multilateral implications" of any transfer, the briefing note reads.

Government officials were instructed not to talk about the potential transfer. Officials were to say that privacy legislation prohibits them from discussing specific immigration or refugee applications, but that "Canada has an active immigration and refugee program. Individual resettlement requests are assessed on a case-by-case basis."

Around the same time that Washington and Ottawa were discussing a potential transfer, Mr. Celil was travelling to Uzbekistan on his newly acquired Canadian passport to visit his wife's family. While applying for a visa extension in March, he was arrested. On June 26, despite initially denying any knowledge of the case, Uzbek officials informed their Canadian counterparts that Mr. Celil had been handed off to Beijing.

Almost immediately, Ottawa worked to release the detained Canadian, taking his case up at the highest level with even the Prime Minister involved. Among the myriad consular cases, this one was a priority, and that meant stopping anything that could make Mr. Celil's situation worse. The transfer of Uyghurs from Guantanamo Bay, once a very real possibility, was pulled off the table.

"My impression is that there was reluctance on the part of the Canadian government to do anything to further complicate their discussions with the Chinese government about Huseyin Celil," Mr. Dixon said. "In other words, that there was concern that if Canada accepted the Uyghur prisoners from Gitmo that that would anger the Chinese and it would potentially complicate efforts by the Canadian government to get Huseyin Celil released."

A source in Ottawa confirmed that Canada came very close to accepting the Uyghur prisoners, but ultimately backed off, in large part because of fears about how such a move would affect Mr. Celil's condition in China.

But if the refusal to accept the Uyghurs as refugees was meant to make the Celil negotiations go more smoothly, it failed. In April of 2007, Mr. Celil was sentenced to life in prison for terrorism offences - offences he strongly denies and Canadian officials said they've seen no evidence of. Mr. Celil has had no access to Canadian consular officials. Beijing refuses to accept his Canadian citizenship.

NOWHERE TO TURN

Today, both Mr. Celil and the Guantanamo Bay Uyghurs have little reason to be optimistic. Both remain in controversial prisons. Despite being declared a non-threat, the Uyghurs are kept in Camp Six, the highest-security detention facility in Guantanamo, where inmates are isolated for 22 hours a day. Mr. Celil is believed to be in a prison in northwest China, but his family is no longer certain of his exact location.

This is a photo of Huseyin Celil and one of his youngest children, taken shortly before his arrest last year. Amnesty International is calling for a special envoy to be sent in the case. (Handout)

In a way, both governments responsible for the detention of the Uyghurs and Mr. Celil have not changed their positions. Beijing has made it clear that it will not budge in Mr. Celil's case. And fearing that further protest may affect other aspects of the China-Canada relationship, Ottawa has toned down its efforts to bring the imprisoned Canadian home.

Washington, too, has not changed its position. The U.S. continues to lobby its allies to take the Uyghurs, who make up a significant portion of the 70 or so men that the U.S. deems not a security threat. Since all three remaining presidential candidates have indicated their desire to close the facility, the U.S. is desperate to get as many of those 70 as it can out of Guantanamo Bay.

"My impression is that if Canada announced that it would take the Uyghurs on Monday, they'd be in Canada on Friday," Mr. Dixon said.

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Beijing is always watching

Chinese-Canadians say spies have been monitoring and intimidating them


CHARLIE GILLIS | May 14, 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

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Ms. Rabiya Kadeer with Canadian Prime Minister

Ms. Rabiya Kadeer with Canadian Prime Minister

President of World Uyghur Congress Ms. Rabiya Kadeer has met with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa on December 12th, 2006.
Ms. Kadeer has visited Canada from December 8 to 14 to raise awareness of the present
plight of the Uyghur people and to get support for the release of Uyghur Canadian
Huseyin Celil who is still in Chinese custody. Ms. Kadeer has been welcomed by all levels of Canadian Government and Parliament.