Three human rights groups say the Liberal government is stonewalling their request for targeted sanctions against four China-based surveillance companies, despite receiving a report documenting how the firms’ technology facilitates torture, sexual abuse and forced labour of China’s Uyghur minority.

In May, Toronto-based Human Rights Action Group and the Ottawa-based Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, along with Washington, D.C.-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies, submitted the 345-page document to Global Affairs and the Privy Council Office (PCO), which advises the prime minister and cabinet. 

The report details what it calls “gross violations of internationally recognized human rights committed against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims,” and recommends the federal government issue sanctions against Hikvision, Dahua, Tiandy and Uniview under its Special Economic Measures Act. 

The legislation, passed in 1992, enables Ottawa to enact targeted measures against foreign nationals and entities deemed responsible for severe rights violations. Once invoked, the law allows the government to seize and sell assets of those targeted, with the proceeds going to the victims.

Hikvision and Dahua are the largest and second-largest manufacturers of video surveillance equipment in the world, respectively. Though smaller, Tiandy and Uniview have significant market share. 

All four companies sell their products in Canada, which has become a key international market for Chinese-made surveillance hardware. While some of Canada’s closest allies have banished Hikvision and Dahua equipment from sensitive sites, fearing China could harness it to gather intelligence, Ottawa has been conspicuously reluctant to follow suit—despite the presence of tens of thousands of the companies’ internet-connected devices on Canadian soil.

“Canada is very important to Hikvision, Dahua, Tiandy and Uniview because, outside of Mexico, it remains an unrestricted entry point to the continent,” said Mishel Kondi of C4ADS, a global security non-profit organization.

In providing surveillance technology to the Chinese government, the four firms are complicit in “the Chinese government’s campaign of genocide and repression against Uyghurs,” the report alleges. The Chinese government has arbitrarily detained more than one million Uyghurs and has engaged in mass surveillance of the roughly 11 million members of the Uyghur ethnic minority living in the northwest region Xinjiang, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2021, the Canadian Parliament declared China’s treatment of its Uyghur minority a genocide. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and much of his cabinet were absent for the vote. 

“The use of mass surveillance goes hand-in-hand with the numerous other gross human rights violations and atrocity crimes perpetuated against Uyghurs, as surveillance systems ‘come with built-in functionality’ to flag Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims for arbitrary detention in camps, where they routinely face sexual violence, torture, forced labour, and death,” reads the report, a redacted copy of which The Logic obtained.

In an email to The Logic, Hikvision spokesperson Jamie Chen said the company “respects human rights and takes all concerns very seriously.” 

“As a market leader, we recognize our responsibility for protecting people and firmly oppose all forms of forced labour, child labour, and modern slavery,” Chen said. The email went on to say the company phased out the functionality of ethnic recognition and analysis in its equipment in 2018.

The Logic received a reply from a purported Dahua press-response inbox saying the company “has never, and will never” develop products to identify or target ethnic, racial or national groups, including Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The note added that there is no state involvement in any aspect of Dahua’s operations, including the “capture or remote viewing of data.” The reply was unsigned and, despite repeated requests, Dahua did not provide the name of a person to whom it could be attributed.  

Attempts to reach Tiandy and Uniview got no response.

The groups who assembled the report say they’ve received no official response since submitting it more than three months ago to the Sanctions Bureau at Global Affairs Canada, and no explanation for Ottawa’s inaction. But their request comes at a sensitive time for the Liberal government, as it tries to repair its fractured relationship with the Chinese government.

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly visited Beijing in July, part of the government’s efforts to repair relations strained following the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou by Canadian police in December 2018, and China’s detention days later of two Canadian nationals.

In 2023, Canada expelled Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei, two years after a Canadian Security Intelligence Service report accused him of targeting the family of Conservative MP Michael Chong, a longtime critic of the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghurs. 

The report calling for sanctions against the four Chinese companies was submitted shortly after an independent public inquiry issued an interim report finding that China “stands out as a main perpetrator” of interference in the 2019 and 2021 Canadian general elections.

Yonah Diamond, senior legal counsel at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, a Montreal-based human rights group that was not involved in producing the report, said it makes a compelling argument for sanctions against the four Chinese companies. 

“This is a clear-cut case for which Canada’s human rights sanctions laws were precisely designed,” said Diamond, who read a copy of the document. “Canada has repeatedly recognized China’s systematic human rights abuses and persecution against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, and even genocide as determined by Parliament, but has yet to back its words with genuine action to hold the perpetrators and enablers accountable.”

In the case of Hikvision, the human rights report documents the company’s close ties with the Chinese government—the People’s Republic of China is the company’s controlling shareholder—as well as its construction and operation of five public-security projects involving facial recognition and mass surveillance installations in Xinjiang. 

The report alleges that Dahua, which was founded in 2001 by Fu Liquan, is similarly “enmeshed in the [Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’s] extensive surveillance system and infrastructure”, and has built data centres and police checkpoints, as well as a “smart police station” capable of transmitting “real-time Uyghur warnings” to officers. (Fu didn’t respond to an emailed request for response.)

The report includes a picture of Tiandyʼs “intelligent interrogation table,” a “multi-functional interrogation device,” pictured in front of a metal restraining device known as a “tiger chair,” which renders detainees practically immobile in a sitting position. A Human Rights Watch report said Chinese police forces use tiger chairs to immobilize detainees, sometimes for days. 

As for Uniview, the report says the company “has co-authored the Chinese Communist Party’s technical legal standards for mass facial recognition systems” based on skin colour and ethnicity, enabling Chinese authorities “to more efficiently carry out their arbitrary arrests and detentions of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim individuals,” leading to “other gross violations of human rights, including torture and sexual violence,” the report reads. 

Despite the evidence, officials in Canada’s Privy Council Office expressed doubt during a June 10 meeting with the human rights groups that the federal government would enact sanctions against the four companies, according to members of the groups who attended. 

“They indicated to us that this is a decision made at a very high level, and that it’s a political decision, as opposed to one strictly based on whether the facts justify sanctions,” said Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project advisory board member Conor Healy, who attended the meeting along with Uyghur rights advocate Mehmet Tohti, legal counsel Sarah Teich, C4ADS security analyst Mishel Kondi and others.

During the meeting, Healy said, he showed pictures of alleged torture, mass surveillance and forced labour at facilities in Xinjiang that use technology from the four companies to Nathalie Béchamp, director of operations for the Privy Council’s office of the foreign and defence policy advisor to the Prime Minister, including a picture of a tiger chair in front of Tiandy’s “intelligent interrogation table.”

Healy said he asked Béchamp if these pictures represented Canadian values. “No, these are not Canadian values,” Béchamp said, according to Healy. In an emailed response to The Logic, PCO spokesperson Stéphane Shank didn’t address Healy’s account of the meeting or Béchamp’s reaction. “Regarding the sanctions package, PCO directed the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project to Global Affairs, explaining that recommendations about sanctions to the Governor in Council are ultimately not the remit of PCO,” Shank said. 

The group also met with Global Affairs officials on the same day, including Eric Bertram, the deputy director of the Greater China division. Tohti, who suspects members of his own family have been detained in China’s camps, said Global Affairs officials told him he should hear back from them by mid-June. “Our argument was so strong and evidence is clear, there is not much for Global Affairs to do, except imposing the sanction,” Tohti said. “They didn’t.” 

Bertram didn’t respond to a request for comment, but in a statement to The Logic, a Global Affairs spokesperson confirmed the meeting took place. James Emmanuel Wanki said the department is reviewing the report and verifying the groups’ submission, adding, “We can provide an update when the necessary steps have been completed.” 

Chinese surveillance tech companies including Hikvision and Dahua are partially or fully banned in the U.S., Australia and the United Kingdom for security concerns. Earlier this year, the Quebec government issued an order prohibiting the use of Hikvision and Dahua products in its buildings and facilities for similar reasons. Hikvision maintains an R&D facility in Montreal, which opened in 2017. 

 Healy said he spotted Dahua cameras in Global Affairs’ Ottawa offices when he visited in June, which he mentioned to Bertram and other officials. “My impression was that they found this troubling, but they did not say much,” Healy said.

Correction: This story has been updated to identify the Special Economic Measures Act as the legislation that human rights groups are asking Ottawa to proceed under.