Justin Trudeau will soon attend his first international summit as prime minister, and some Canadians are calling on him to speak out for their family members imprisoned in China.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum starts Nov. 12 but world leaders will convene for their meetings on Nov. 18 and 19.
It will be Trudeau’s second foray into the world of leaders’ summitry following the G20 meeting in Turkey this weekend. Both are seen as an opportunity to build relationships and draw lines.
During the election campaign, Trudeau pledged to speak directly to Russian leader Vladimir Putin about his interventions in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, which he described as irresponsible and dangerous, respectively.
“Canada needs to continue to stand strongly with the international community pushing back against the bully that is Vladimir Putin. If I have the opportunity in the coming months to meet with Vladimir Putin, I will tell him all this directly,” he said.
But Putin isn’t the only world leader attending APEC that Canadians hope Trudeau will speak with directly. Canadians who have family members imprisoned in China for their spiritual convictions are also pleading for help from Trudeau. They hope he will intercede with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on behalf of those family members.
Torontonian Paul Li is hoping the prime minister will somehow raise the plight of his father, a former mayor of a small town in China who was recently sentenced to a second eight-year detention in a Chinese prison for practising Falun Gong, a traditional spiritual practice that has been persecuted in China since 1999.
Vancouver resident Alice Zhang hopes the same for her mother Tang Huafeng, a former schoolteacher. Tang was sent to a labour camp in 2006 for two years and arrested again in February 2014 and sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison.
Zhang and Li scheduled press conferences for Thursday, Nov. 12, just a few days before Trudeau was to leave for the Philippines.
