CAPTIVES IN CHINA FACE UNCERTAIN FUTURE
Detention at secretive ‘black sites’ possible
Lights on 24-7. Interrogations that last for hours. Deprivation designed to break the will.
No one can say for certain what conditions two Canadians held captive in China are facing, but for other Westerners who’ve been detained and accused of running afoul of China’s laws, the picture they’ve painted is grim.
“Generally, we don’t hear of physical violence. Six to 10 hours of questioning, yes,” said Dan Harris, a Seattle lawyer who advises companies that do business in China.
“If they’re being held to mess with Canada, I would guess they are being treated fine. If being held for corporate law violations, I would guess they are being treated fine. If being held for political reasons, I truly do not know.”
On Thursday, Global Affairs Canada offered little new information about the status of former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig, an analyst with an international think-tank, and Michael Spavor, a businessman who promotes tourism and investment in North Korea and famously introduced Dennis Rodman to Kim Jong Un, other than to say they were in communication with Chinese officials and providing consular assistance.
Chinese foreign ministry officials confirmed the two men had been detained Monday and were being held separately under suspicion of “endangering national security.”
But speculation persisted they were pawns in a diplomatic feud — captured by China in retaliation for the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, by Canadian authorities on behalf of the United States, which is seeking to extradite her for allegedly violating trade sanctions on Iran.
Human rights watchers have speculated the two Canadians might not be held in traditional jails or detention centres but in “black sites,” secretive compounds authorized by the government since 2013 typically for the detention of journalists, activists and others who challenge the status quo.
Though usually reserved for Chinese citizens, some foreigners have been known to be held under socalled “Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location.” Once in custody they can be held up to six months without access to a lawyer, human rights observers say.
“It’s there to break you down,” Swedish activist Peter Dahlin, director of Safeguard Defenders, a panAsian human rights NGO, told the National Post.
Dahlin knows from first-hand experience. In 2016, he was in Beijing helping to train and provide support to human rights lawyers. In the middle of the night, he was spirited away to a four-storey compound where he was detained for 23 days.
His cell, enclosed by bars and security doors, consisted of nothing more than a bed, a desk, a sink, toilet and shower, he said. The windows were usually curtained off. Everything was covered with “suicide padding” designed to prevent detainees from harming themselves.
Dahlin was provided nothing to read or write with. Two guards kept watch over him around the clock. He was not permitted to speak to them.
“Depriving stimulation is very important. It plays tricks on your mind,” he said.
Though he says he was never physically harmed, Dahlin says he was subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation and psychological intimidation. One time, men rushed his cell and surrounded his bed and then ran off.
He was released only after being forced, he says, to read a scripted confession, later broadcast on state TV, in which he acknowledged violating Chinese law.
“Isolating someone in that way for an extended period of time, holding them incommunicado without any oversight, it’s the perfect environment for torture and other illegal treatment of a suspect,” Joshua Rosenzweig of Amnesty International told the Washington Post. “It’s a way to exert physical and psychological pressure to get someone to confess.”
Such “enforced disappearances constitute a gross violation of human rights and an international crime, so severe in fact that under certain circumstances it may amount to a crime against humanity,” Michael Caster, a human rights advocate, wrote in The Diplomat, an international affairs magazine, in 2016.
A Canadian couple, Kevin and Julia Garratt, went through a similar experience. They were apprehended in 2014 and accused of being spies.
“We were fed three meals a day but we had guards in our room,” Kevin Garratt recalled in a Global News interview this week. “The lights were on 24-7. There’s nothing in your room. If you want a drink of water, they have to get it.”