Second Canadian missing in China after questioning
OTTAWA — A second Canadian is missing in China after alerting Global Affairs Canada that he was being questioned by Chinese authorities, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Wednesday.
The information comes mere days after the Beijing Bureau of State Security rounded up a Canadian diplomat, who is on a leave from his job, in a move that escalated a tense diplomatic dispute between the two countries.
Freeland told reporters Wednesday the government has been unable to make contact with the second Canadian since he raised concerns with officials. She said the government doesn’t know his whereabouts and that she has raised the case with Chinese authorities.
Freeland added that Ottawa is in touch with the missing man’s family, but declined to say anything more about his situation.
“It’s a situation that’s, perhaps, delicate,” she said in French. “And I want to respect this individual and his family.”
On Monday, China took Michael Kovrig into custody after Beijing warned Ottawa of severe consequences for its recent arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of tech giant Huawei.
A senior government official said China confirmed to Canada very early Wednesday that the Beijing Bureau of State Security had detained Kovrig. Ottawa, however, doesn’t know what the allegations against him are nor does it know where he is, the official said.
The Beijing News has reported that Kovrig “was suspected of engaging in activities that endanger China’s national security.”
A former Canadian ambassador to Beijing, who was Kovrig’s boss in China, said he would have been under the close watch of Chinese authorities years ago as he travelled the country and talked to dissidents on behalf of Canada’s government.
Kovrig took on political-reporting assignments on highly sensitive subjects, Guy Saint-Jacques said in an interview.
Saint-Jacques said Kovrig tried to “get the pulse” of many groups, such as displaced Tibetans scattered around China and Muslim minorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where Beijing has been accused by the international community — including Canada — of mass detentions.
“He went to remote locations trying to meet with people from these communities to try and understand what they were going through, in terms of the challenges they faced, protecting their cultures,” Saint-Jacques said in an interview. “So, all of this, obviously, would have attracted the attention of security people.”