Don’t forget Celil in Chinese prison, say Uyghur’s supporters

Ontario man has been in jail for past 15 years, has teen he’s never met

OTTAWA — Supporters of a Canadian man imprisoned in China for a decade and a half want the next federal government to use the 2022 Beijing Olympics as a bargaining chip to bring him home.

And the advocates for Huseyin Celil say they want the deal to be a package that also wins the freedom of two other high-profile Canadian prisoners — Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

Kovrig and Spavor recently surpassed a grim 1,000-day milestone in Chinese prisons in what is seen by Canada and its Western allies as retaliation for the RCMP’s arrest of Chinese high-tech scion Meng Wanzhou on an American extradition warrant in December 2018.

But Celil’s advocates don’t want Canadians to forget him either and are calling on whomever wins Monday’s federal election to appoint a special envoy to win his freedom.

Canadian consular visits have been banned because China doesn’t recognize Celil’s dual Canadian citizenship, obtained in 2005, one year before he was arrested in Uzbekistan by the Chinese after his long-standing advocacy for the human rights of his Muslim ethnic Uyghur minority.

“I’m hoping with the 2022 Olympic Games to be held in China that it’s another moment where there’s another opportunity to secure the release and return of Celil, whether it’s part of a package that’s done with the two Michaels or a standalone,” Celil’s lawyer, Chris MacLeod, said in an interview Tuesday. “Obviously, I want all three.” With the Winter Games set to open in February, there are growing calls to boycott the Chinese games or cancel plans to broadcast them amid a chorus of criticism over Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghurs, as well as its clampdowns on Hong Kong, Tibet and Taiwan.

Celil’s family has been caught up in that geopolitical swirl as they saw their periodic visits to him in prison cut off about five years ago. That’s when Beijing began its crackdown on Muslim Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang province, rounding them up into prison camps, citing the need to fight terrorism.

The upshot for Celil’s family is that they are no longer sure if he is even alive because all contact with his family in China has been cut off, said MacLeod.

“I don’t have any communication with the family since the concentration camps opened in China,” said Celil’s wife, Kamila, in an interview from southern Ontario where she lives with her 16-year-old son — a child her husband has never met.

Alex Neve, the former Canadian secretary-general of Amnesty International, said successive Canadian politicians have failed Celil and his family.

Prior to last week’s televised federal leaders’ debate, Neve joined a coalition of several dozen human rights advocates, lawyers and many others in sending an open letter to the five major party leaders to revive their interest in Celil’s case.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole has said Canada should consider boycotting the Beijing 2022 Olympics. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau in February abstained as prime minister from a House of Commons vote on a motion declaring the atrocities against the Uyghurs a genocide and calling on the International Olympic Committee to move the 2022 Olympic Games out of China.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh supported that motion.