On June 23, Global Affairs Canada issued a statement on the recent visit of the Canadian Ambassador to China, Jennifer May, to China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The statement repeated the same old rhetoric, expressing so-called concerns based on fabricated rumors and reports with ulterior motives, without mentioning what Ambassador May really saw and heard in Xinjiang. We urge the Canadian side to be objective and unbiased and show the Canadian people the real Xinjiang that Ambassador May saw during her visit.

Today, Xinjiang enjoys social stability, economic prosperity, ethnic unity, religious harmony, and people there live a decent life. Human rights of people of all ethnic groups, including their right to use and advance their own ethnic languages, are fully protected. In the past year, more than 4,300 foreign government officials, diplomatic envoys, religious figures, experts and scholars, journalists and foreign tourists have visited Xinjiang. All of them spoke highly of the remarkable progress in Xinjiang’s economic and social development and commended the great efforts by the Chinese government to protect Xinjiang’s multi-ethnic culture and freedom of religious belief.

Canada has repeatedly made unwarranted remarks about other countries’ human rights situation, while turning a blind eye to its own racial issues. In Canada, indigenous people still face systematic racial discrimination and unfair treatment, and homeless people cannot have their rights protected. And recently, racial discrimination against black civil servants in the Canadian federal government has attracted international attention. China urges Canada to reflect on itself and truly improve its own human rights situation, instead of holding the flashlight only to check on others, not itself.