CHINA ‘GRASPING AT STRAWS’
SPAVOR ACCUSED OF TAKING SPY PHOTOS BY COMMUNIST PARTY MOUTHPIECE
The case against Canadian Michael Spavor, sentenced to 11 years in a Chinese prison after a secret trial, allegedly hinged around photos and videos he took of military equipment, claims a report in the Global Times newspaper, a mouthpiece for the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
But the report of the unverified claims, made via a nationalist tabloid, even as Canadian diplomats have been unable to attend court hearings for Spavor and his fellow Canadian detainee Michael Kovrig, immediately raised questions as to why the Chinese government wanted the allegations made public.
“People all over the world are paying attention to this,” said Margaret Mccuaig-johnston, a senior fellow at the University of Alberta’s China
Institute. “Canada has been exceptionally effective at working with other countries to bring pressure on China and they don’t like it.”
Charles Burton, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-laurier Institute, who has had diplomatic postings in China, suspected the Chinese government was concerned about the upcoming ruling by Justice Heather Holmes in the Meng Wanzhou case.
“There is increasing concern within China about the ruling by Justice Holmes with regard to the U.S. extradition request,” Burton said. “I believe the Chinese still thinks if the Chinese government exerts enough pressure on Canada that somehow the ruling can be manipulated into Ms. Meng’s favour. That is simply a non-starter.”
Burton was also critical of the federal government’s response to the case of Spavor and Kovrig, also imprisoned in China after a secret trial.
Burton said it was hard to see how the Kovrig and Spavor cases had been the top priority of the Canadian government, given, for example, China’s ambassador had not been expelled from Canada and Dominic Barton, Canada’s ambassador to China, had not been withdrawn. Nor had Canada had much success in ending the fentanyl trade or cracking down on Chinese cyber-espionage.
“I believe that the government’s claims that they made Kovrig and Spavor the top foreign policy priority are difficult to verify, simply because we haven’t made any kind of retaliation to provide the Chinese government with incentive to release them,” Burton said. “We’ve simply passively responded to what the Chinese government has been doing.”
This Sunday marks 1,000 days since the arrest of Spavor and Kovrig in December 2018. Their arrests are widely seen as a retaliatory measure for Canada’s arrest of Meng, the chief financial officer of Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications firm, who faces extradition to the United States for trial on fraud charges relating to American sanctions against Iran. Judge Holmes will rule on her case on Oct. 21.
Spavor, a businessman who ran tours in North Korea, was sentenced on Aug. 11 after being found guilty on espionage charges. Kovrig’s trial on espionage charges began in March; a verdict has yet to be announced.
The Global Times said Kovrig, “under the guise of a businessman and false pretext of commerce,” entered China in 2017 and 2018, and “gathered a large amount of undisclosed information related to China’s national security, on which he wrote analytical reports.”
The report, which cites just one unnamed source, also claimed Spavor was a “key informant” of Kovrig.
Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat, was working as an analyst for the International Crisis Group at the time of his arrest. (A spokesperson with ICG declined to comment on anonymous allegations in the Global Times.)
“It’s concerning that the Global Times, which we know to be a mouthpiece of the (Chinese Communist Party), is speaking so openly about details of the accusations against Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor,” said Mccuaig-johnston. “We don’t know the details because our diplomats are not allowed into the courtroom.”
Mccuaig-johnston said the Chinese government often included structures such as bridges and airports on its list of military equipment and installations, which could explain the allegations. Burton, too, pointed out that there could be military aircraft at civilian airports and photographs could have been taken.
“The Chinese authorities are really grasping at straws to justify the brutal incarceration of Kovrig and Spavor for so long,” Burton said.
Since December 2018, Canada and China have been involved in an ugly, and very public, diplomatic dispute over the arrests and Canada has been successful in enlisting support of American allies, both under former president Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, in pressuring the Chinese government to release the two men.
“Human beings are not bargaining chips,” Biden said in February 2021. “Canada and the United States will stand together against abuse of universal rights and democratic freedom.”
China, via Cong Peiwu, its ambassador in Canada, has claimed Canada has “grossly interfered” with Chinese judicial sovereignty and has said the Canadian government must “stop slandering and attacking China so as to avoid bringing further damage to China-canada relations.”
In an emailed statement, the Canadian foreign affairs ministry said it is “deeply troubled by the lack of transparency ... in the cases of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor,” and insists the Canadian government will continue to work to free the two men.
“China denied Canadian officials access to the trial and alleged evidence,” the statement says.
The Global Times story also said Kovrig and Spavor had been given letters and books while imprisoned, and claimed they were in good health but, Mccuaig-johnston said knowledge about Chinese prisons suggested the food resembles “gruel.”
“If they’re in good health, it’s despite their treatment there,” she said. “The treatment of prisoners in China is despicable.”