`THREE MAIN PLAYERS'
China, Canada or U.S., says Kovrig's wife
Kovrig's wife on who can help duo
There are “three main players” involved in the imprisonment of two Canadians in China, and any one of them could potentially get the pair freed, says the wife of detainee Michael Kovrig.
China, the United States and Canada all have it in their power to end a gruelling ordeal that on Thursday reached the two-year mark for ex-diplomat Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, said Vina Nadjibulla.
The two men were swept up in December 2018 on nebulous national-security charges and have been held largely incommunicado since then.
“This is not OK,” Nadjibulla said in a podcast interview with the International Crisis Group, her husband's employer. “This is not how states should conduct their foreign policy. Innocent citizens should not be caught in the crossfire of superpowers as they negotiate and manage their competition or differences.”
She acknowledged that the situation is complicated but added, “I'm sometimes reminded there are three ways Michael comes home.”
One is for China to recognize Kovrig's obvious innocence and let him go. Another is for the U.S. to “intervene” in the extradition proceedings against Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou that likely precipitated the detentions.
Meng was arrested in Vancouver just over two years ago, on American fraud charges.
And the third would be if Canada “engages in discussions with China” aimed at winning Kovrig's freedom, Nadjibulla said.
Although not mentioned in her interview, she previously has urged the federal government to consider releasing Meng in exchange for the two Michaels' freedom. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has balked at brokering such an exchange in response to what many call “hostage diplomacy” by China.
Meanwhile, International Crisis Group head Rob Malley said on the same podcast that he's been assured by both the outgoing Trump White House and the incoming Biden administration that the Canadians' predicament is front of mind.
“They say it is one of the issues they are going to focus on with China,” he told Nadjibulla. “And thanks to everything you've done, nobody will forget it.”
In fact, a glimmer of hope for the two Michaels appeared recently with news that the U.S. Justice Department is negotiating a “deferred prosecution” deal with Meng that could see her released relatively soon.
China officially has denied that Spavor and Kovrig were picked up in retaliation for Meng's arrest days earlier in Vancouver. But it's widely believed to have been a tit-fortat move.
If those U.S.- China talks succeed, Chinese prosecutors could say that new evidence had arisen and then release the Michaels once Meng is back in China, said Guy Saint-Jacques, a former ambassador to Beijing.
“This would be the elegant solution where everyone saves face,” he said by email Thursday.
A third Canadian, Robert Schellenberg, saw his 15-year prison sentence on drug charges abruptly escalated to the death penalty soon after Meng's detention.
Nadjibulla, a Toronto- based leadership consultant, also revealed on the podcast that Kovrig has gone through most of 2020 with little outside contact, his Chinese jailers allowing only single, 30-minute consular visits in October and November. Even those occurred virtually, and most of the letters sent by friends and family appear not to have got through, Nadjibulla said.
But she said he has stayed remarkably free of bitterness, reading books sent from home — at least those not seized by the Chinese — exercising in his tiny cell and meditating. He seems anxious to come out with “post-traumatic growth,” not post- traumatic stress, his wife said.
“He also says on a daily basis, sometimes on an hourly basis, he tries to turn his anger into determination and his grievance into fortitude,” she said. “There is a constant struggle to stay in the frame of mind that allows him to survive and to also make the most of this experience, to not be broken by it.”
On Thursday, there appeared to be an unsettling development, when Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the pair had been “arrested and indicted and tried.”
But it appears that she made the comment mistakenly, with the official English transcript of her news conference later quoting her as saying the Canadians “will be” tried.
The two are being prosecuted for “endangering Chinese national security,” Hua said. “It was completely a legal case handled according to law. In the process, their lawful rights have been guaranteed.”
David Mulroney, another former ambassador to Beijing, scoffed at that.
“It has nothing to do with a genuine or valid legal process,” he said via email, “and everything to do with an ongoing Chinese influence operation, timed to coincide with the anniversary of the very cruel detentions of two innocent Canadians.”