TWO MICHAELS WEREN'T FIRST CANADIANS TAKEN
China must be held accountable for practice of kidnapping foreign citizens, Margaret Mccuaig-johnston writes. Part of a series.
Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are not the first to be held hostage by Beijing.
In 2014, Canadians Kevin and Julia Garratt were detained after Chinese national Su Bin was arrested in Canada for extradition to the U.S. on charges of stealing military secrets. Michael Kovrig was working then at our embassy in Beijing, so he knows the kind of interventions that are going on now. The Garratts' book, Two Tears on the Window, is a chilling description of their experience.
Years before them, UyghurCanadian Huseyin Celil was detained while visiting Uzbekistan, transported to China, tried as a separatist with no evidence or consular access, and is serving 32 years in prison.
This horror has befallen other Canadians, as well as citizens of other countries. It is time for liberal democracies to come together to show China that there are consequences for such actions.
In a dispute over the Senkaku Islands in 2010, China detained four Japanese citizens, and the government in Tokyo caved in to get them back. Since then, nine Japanese citizens have been imprisoned in China on alleged espionage charges, with one given a 12-year sentence.
In 2013, former British journalist and corporate investigator Peter Humphrey was detained and forced to make televised confessions.
Swedish activist Peter Dahlin was detained for 23 days in 2016, forced to confess, and then expelled from China, as were British and French activists. The previous year, Swedish publisher Gui Minhai and U.K. bookseller Lee Bo were kidnapped in Thailand and Hong Kong respectively, taken to China, forced to replace their citizenships with Chinese, and are still incarcerated there. Similarly, in 2017, Chinese-canadian billionaire Xiao Jianhua was kidnapped in Hong Kong and is still detained in China.
In 2018, Canadian brothers Chen Zhiheng and Chen Zhiyu were arrested in China and forced to give televised confessions aimed at compelling the extradition of a Chinese billionaire who was seeking asylum in the U.S.
In August 2020, Beijing detained prominent Australian TV business anchor Cheng Lei of English-language CGTN, accusing her of endangering China's national security in what is seen as one of many acts of retaliation for Australia's call for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19. Three weeks later, two Australian journalists were questioned by the Ministry of State Security regarding Cheng, and fled China fearing detention.
Citizens of many countries, including Canada, the U.S., and Ireland, have been detained or barred from leaving China during commercial disputes with Chinese companies. According to the Canada-china Business Council, many Canadian executives say they will not return to China until Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are released.
The execution sentences for drug offences of Canadians
Robert Schellenberg, Fan Wei, Xu Weihong, and Ye Jianhui tracked closely the steps in Meng Wanzhou's court hearings. Sun Qian, a Falun Gong practitioner, recently renounced her Canadian citizenship and was given an eightyear sentence. But one cannot renounce Canadian citizenship to your Chinese jailers. There is a process. Monthly consular access in all these cases should be granted.
As Foreign Affairs Minister François-philippe Champagne told Parliament last month, “Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are not just two Canadian citizens, they are two citizens of a liberal democracy.”
So what can liberal democracies do to prevent such actions by Beijing? First, we should not cave in to such pressure. That would invite future hostage-taking.
Moreover, China must see consequences for its actions. We and our allies should take collective action under our Magnitsky legislation against those officials involved in the kidnapping of our citizens, and hold them personally accountable.
Canada must also reassess its engagement with China, determining where we can safely engage and where we need to insulate ourselves from Beijing's actions. The imminent China Framework must provide such a reset.
Finally, Canada and our allies should work together in alignment, finding every possible occasion in international bodies to demand China respect the rule of law. Canada's ambassador to the UN, Bob Rae, has made an excellent start. China must be shown that the tactics it has been using are not going to work, and its own interest lies in collaborating with others, not in hostage-taking.