Support letters from Canadian PM, Immigration Minister promoting China backed Tibetan Association are fake
DHARAMSALA, 26 April: The support letters addressed to the Tibetan Association of Canada, a China-backed fake Tibetan community organization has forged the signature of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Federal Minister for Immigration, Ahmed Hussen.
The said letters, purportedly written by the Prime Minister and the Immigration Minister, congratulating and greeting the association has forged the signature of the two leaders. The letters were fake, the Prime Minister’s Office and the minister’s office has declared according to a various online news report.
Both the offices were reportedly looking into the matter, investigations are on.
Alarmed to learn that the “letter of support” from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Immigration Minister, Ahmed Hussen to the newly created Association were a forgery. “Fabrication of anyone’s signature is inappropriate and unlawful, this matter has been reported to security officials who are investigating, Arif Virani, a constitutional lawyer and the Liberal MP for Parkdale-High Park in Toronto has said in a Facebook post.
The letters claiming to be from the Prime Minister and the Immigration Minister were circulating on social media. While a Chinese- language news report dated 22 April stated that the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Federal Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Ahmed Hussen had sent a congratulatory letter to the establishment of the association.
The report said that the association was inaugurated with a grand ceremony in Toronto on April 20, 2019, attended by over 300 representatives from three levels of government in Canada and people from all walks of life witnessed this historic moment.
“It’s unclear who created the letters, which contain grammatical and spelling mistakes and were shared on Facebook and Twitter,” reported the star.com, Canada’s largest online news site.
A politician who attended the inauguration declined to share the contact information of the people who invited him, the report added.
Appalled by the fake letter from the Prime Minister and the Immigration Minister, Tibetans in Canada have issued a joint statement to “strongly object” to the formation of the new group.
“The new group, does not reflect the views of most Tibetan-Canadians and it is being used to mislead Canadians and it is misleading senior Canadian officials into thinking that this new group actually represents Tibetans in Canada,” the report quoted six Tibetan organizations in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and B.C. as saying in their statement.
Qin Wen, a Chinese listed as one of the directors have said that their association didn’t forge it and that they are innocent, in an interview on The Globe and Mail.
Meanwhile, Lhadon Tethong, director of the Tibet Action Institute has called it an act of desperation.
“I guess this is what you do when you are desperate for legitimacy,” She said in a Facebook post.
While the fake letter from Prime Minister Trudeau dated 17 April commended the association for their initiative to preserve and promote Tibetan cultural heritage in Canada, the undated forged letter from the minister’s office lauded the association for providing an opportunity to reflect upon the contributions and accomplishments of the Tibetan community which it said enriched Canada in so many ways.
