VANCOUVER—A human rights complaint, filed by a Chinese journalist who claims he was fired from a Canadian-based Chinese-language newspaper for his political beliefs, will go forward, despite the newspaper’s attempt to have the complaint dismissed.

Lei Jin, former editor-in-chief of Global Chinese Press Inc., says he was fired in 2017 after he tried to publish an article about the death of a Chinese dissident in 2017, and claims the company president wanted him to publish more “positive” news stories about China.

“I came here to Canada for freedom of journalism,” Jin said in an interview. “But I cannot have freedom of speech even in the newspaper, so it’s very disappointing to me,” he said.

Jin—who sometimes goes by the first name ‘Raymond’— had been a journalist in China, but says he immigrated to Canada because he was unable to report freely on the government and was being pressured to join the Chinese Communist Party.

The company’s president, Xiaohong “Annie” Si could not be reached for comment before publication but in tribunal documents the company claims it fired Jin for insubordination and poor work performance.

The documents released after the tribunal judge refused to dismiss the case outline a number of incidents that happened before Jin was fired, and highlight the disagreement around publishing the obituary. However the hearing for the case has not yet happened, so the documents do not rule on whether a human rights violation took place.

In July 2017, Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese human rights activist and Nobel Prize winner, passed away. According to Jin, Xiaobo was a “highly political figure and an enemy of the Chinese government who was imprisoned for supporting democracy in China.”

The documents say that Jin tried to publish a story about Xiaobo’s death on July 13, 2017, but Si pulled the article from the paper before it went to print. They go on to say that Si said she had instructed Jin not to publish any stories about Xiaobo until she had decided on how to cover the event and said she had previously instructed staff at the paper to “not publish politically controversial articles without her approval.”

But in documents, Jin said that as the editor he had consistently been responsible for whether or not something went in the paper, and had not received instructions from Si to hold off on publishing the obituary.

“In Canada you’re supposed to report about, at least the news about Liu Xiaobo’s death, right?” he said in an interview. “It’s a very basic thing. It’s not like criticizing the Chinese government.”

Si told Jin that he was fired on July 21, 2017 and in documents Si says it was due to his poor performance, and not because of the disagreement over the obituary or other publishing decisions. As evidence, Si presented two emails in which company officials discuss firing Jin.

Cheuk Kwan, an expert on China’s soft power and spokesperson for the Toronto Association for Democracy in China, said that if Jin wins the human rights complaint it could set a precedent for journalistic freedom in Canada’s Chinese media.

Media censorship, whether self-imposed or by the Chinese consulate in Canada, happens every day, he said in an interview.

“In the Chinese press there’s absolutely no integrity in standing up to the Chinese consulate,” he said, explaining that when outlets publish stories that question the Chinese Communist Party or highlight opposition, the consulate will often call the outlet and threaten them, or call the companies that advertise with the paper, and pressure them to pull their ads from the paper.

But Daniel Cowper, the lawyer representing Global Chinese Press Inc. said his side plans to present more about Jin’s poor employment record at the company. Cowper, who did not speak in detail about the complaint, said the case is about the termination of an employee and he thinks it’s “unfortunate” the case is being discussed publicly.

Laura Track, Jin’s lawyer, insists the case is about political beliefs.

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“Mr. Jin, it would seem, is not the first person to have lost his job because of political views expressed in a Chinese-language newspaper in Canada,” she said.

“And it’s important for the human rights tribunal to consider this issue, and consider whether it’s appropriate for an employer to be able to punish someone through termination or other measures for expressing political beliefs they don’t agree with.”

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