CHINA'S NEW FOREIGN POLICY
`Two Michaels' part of bigger plan
People claim China has changed fundamentally since Xi Jinping took power nearly eight years ago. Many analysts would go further, and say that China has undergone an almost equally sweeping change in the two years since Dec. 10, 2018, that day of the brazen detentions, and later disappearances, of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.
When Kovrig was snatched in a late-night raid, not by police but by the Ministry of State Security (MSS), he would have been blindfolded and taken, in a caravan of unmarked cars, to southern Beijing. When it happened to me less than three years earlier, I remember, peeking through the blindfold, the cars rushing down empty streets at nearly 200 km/h. Both Michaels would go on to be accused of vague national security crimes, and instead of being arrested, they would be “disappeared” into what is called an RSDL (Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location).
I'm certain Kovrig was taken to the very same secret prison where I was held.
When in RSDL, you are kept in solitary confinement, with no right to a lawyer or contact with families. The state need not acknowledge where you are, secrecy and non-communication being the entire point. The United Nations has repeatedly classified the use of RSDL as enforced disappearances. Kovrig's place stopped being secret only when I informed the Canadian government that he was in fact likely at this location: 39.809781°N, 116.383599°E.
In China today, it is no longer enough that police can arrest you, indict you without evidence
beyond a coerced confession, and sentence you via courts controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The state's need for complete power made it introduce RSDL as an alternative, where police or MSS can hold anyone they want for half a year.
The high risk of suicide when kept in solitary confinement for so long means the rooms must be proofed against self-harm. In the case of Kovrig, it meant a cell with not only soft-padded walls, but even a toilet with thick padding. The two guards present inside the room 24/7, sitting opposite you — their only duty to stare at you and take notes on anything you do — also ensure you do not hurt yourself. The only breaks from staring into the walls, which gnaws away at your sanity quicker than people can imagine, are the six-hour nightly interrogations, when you are strapped into a tiger chair. Since RSDL was introduced, massive changes to law have weakened any safeguards citizens had: alternative systems for disappearances have been introduced, and new national security laws allow convictions based merely on words rather than actions. Any trial, now that both Michaels have been formally arrested, will have nothing to do with evidence or judicial process.
Unlike Chinese lawyers, journalists or other politically troublesome people, at least the Michaels do exist. Others are registered into detention under false names, and remain disappeared, as my NGO, Safeguard Defenders, exposed in a new report last month.
Three new developments — all related to the Michaels, and Canada — have aligned.
First, China's use of the RSDL system to disappear rather than detain has exploded, from a few hundred victims the first year to, soon, 10,000 victims annually, according to an analysis of Chinese court data, exposed for the first time in another recent Safeguard Defenders report.
Second, foreign citizens are being targeted at an accelerated rate as tools of Chinese foreign policy, and Canada is far from the only victim.
At the time of writing, Australia is the key target, but Americans, British, Swedish, Japanese, Turkish and even Belizean citizens have been taken, many of them into RSDL.
In other cases, already-detained citizens, such as Canadian Robert Schellenberg, have had their existing sentences revised — in his case to the death penalty. Australia, which like Canada was foolish enough to entertain agreeing to an extradition treaty with China, was told that its citizens were more likely to face harsher sentencing and death penalties if it didn't ratify the agreement.
Finally, and what the Canadian government has seemingly failed to realize, is that while the beginning of this rapid deterioration of relations with China may indeed, as China claims, be because of the detention of Huawei's CFO pending an extradition process, if it were not that, there would be another reason. China will find any reason it sees fit to initiate a diplomatic standoff.
This year alone, China has threatened significant punishment and “retribution” to a list of countries so long it's soon going to be easier to list those not threatened. And it's not only major powers such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, India and Japan that are being targeted, but smaller ones such as Finland, the Czech Republic and Nepal.
The situation for Kovrig and Spavor, the latter who, like Canadians Kevin and Julia Garratt a few years earlier, is being held by MSS in northeastern China, cannot be resolved by Canada without abandoning both its system of governance and way of life. China knows this. Yet it demands such action anyway. Why?
The actions by China in the last few weeks, seemingly ignored by much of world media, have laid bare, in full public view, China's new blueprint for foreign relations, and the role other countries are to play in a new world led by China. The “14 demands” issued to the Australian government, amount, essentially, to Australia submitting itself to a form of modern-day vassal-hood. To adhere to China's demands in exchange for restored market access (shut down in violation of WTO rules), Australia would have to change the fundamental nature of its country and abandon an independent foreign policy.
The CCP expects nothing less from Canada.
In a world where China seeks to submit those smaller than itself to tributary state status — free to act as long as their action does not relate to anything China wants — this is perhaps the wake-up call western nations need. They must realize China's aggression against international norms, laws and basic decency requires a co-ordinated response, where free nations defend those very freedoms together, not alone.
It is sad that Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, entirely innocent, would have to suffer for years, but the Justin Trudeau government has a moral, not to mention political and economic, obligation to at least learn from this tragedy, and take steps to protect future Canadian victims.