By Heba Aly and Jessica Leeder
Toronto Star
(Jul 3, 2006)

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is being called on to send a special envoy to China to secure the release of an imprisoned Canadian facing a death sentence.

Burlington resident Huseyincan Celil is being held in China and his lawyer Chris MacLeod said he sent a letter Friday requesting the prime minister's assistance.

"It has to be directed from the top to a high level in Beijing. When the prime minister speaks, he speaks to his direct counterpart in China," MacLeod said.

Celil, 37, was arrested on March 27 in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, when he went to renew a visitor's visa. He was using a Canadian passport while in the country with his wife visiting relatives.

The man was arrested in his native China in the mid-1990s allegedly for working on behalf of the minority Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang province.

Uyghurs, Turkish-speaking Muslims, have long been accused by China of leading a violent separatist movement.

After he escaped, he was admitted to Canada as a refugee in 2001. While he and his wife were settling this area, Celil was sentenced to death in absentia by a Chinese court. He is also charged with murder and kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan -- a charge his lawyer argues is a "ruse" because Celil was in a different country at the time of the alleged crime.

Following his arrest in Uzbekistan in March, his family immediately began to worry he would be extradited to China and executed. Seven months pregnant with the couple's fourth child, Kamila Telendibaeva told the Star she's not even sure her husband is still alive. She issued a plea for help days after she learned her husband was covertly transferred from an Uzbekistan prison to China.

"They have to do more. They have to do more," she said in shaky English. "Only the Canadian government can help to bring my husband back."

MacLeod said the prime minister's intervention is necessary not only to free Huseyincan, but also to ensure the safety of other immigrants and refugees in Canada.

"They need to know that when they get a Canadian passport, they can actually safely leave this country for other countries," MacLeod said.

The Canadian government insists it is doing what it can. Various diplomatic efforts were made while Celil was held in Uzbekistan, including three consular visits and a request that he be released on humanitarian grounds.

Uzbek authorities informed the government last Monday that Celil had been extradited to China. On Tuesday, a diplomatic note -- the strongest instrument governments can use to communicate without damaging relations -- was hand-delivered to Chinese officials asking about Celil's whereabouts.

"We have made what I would consider to be significant high-level interventions from the very beginnings of this case," Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said Friday.

So far, there has been no official response.

"If the Chinese don't do anything, we will be persistent; we will continue to protect the rights of Canadian citizens to the greatest extent possible," MacKay said.

According to a professor of international relations and political science at the University of Toronto, the government may be concerned about economic ties with China.

"Historically, we have not been willing to lean very heavily on China," Aurel Braun said.