In November 2025, David Matas, HRAG co-founder and chair, appeared on the Dev Singh podcast to discuss his personal background seeking justice for mass atrocities and human rights abuses more generally, the particular violations of genocide, transnational repression, and mass killing of Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience for their organs in China, and efforts to bring perpetrators to justice, including through use of targeted sanctions.
On the latter point, when asked whether sanctions work, Matas replied that the utility of targeted sanctions depends on the audience. He elaborated that there are three audiences when dealing with human rights violations, namely the victims, the perpetrators, and the public. He elaborated on the usefulness of targeted sanctions in relation to these groups–
“It works for the victims always, because it recognizes their victimization, it shows that we’re concerned with that, it means they’re not alone… For the perpetrators, I mean they are going to ignore it. They will say there’s nothing wrong with us, you’re doing something wrong by sanctioning us.”
He went on to explain that sanctions nonetheless have some impact on perpetrators, highlighting the retaliatory sanctions that China imposed on Canadian civil society actors, including himself, in response to the Canadian government’s designation of perpetrators of the persecution of Uyghurs, Falun Gong, and Tibetans. Regarding this impact on perpetrators, he stated–
“obviously, it mattered to them or they wouldn’t have done that, so it’s had some impact. But it wasn’t one of, we’re going to change our behavior… but I would say also sanctions do have a public opinion impact because they help to identify perpetrators, it’s kind of a record of what’s going on, it changes the public discourse, so I would say sanctions are useful but I think you have to look at who they are useful for and what they do.”
