More than 20 Western diplomats yesterday staged a public show of unity outside a Canadian’s high-profile spying trial in Beijing, highlighting their shared concern about the risk of arbitrary detention in the nation.
Representatives from the US, the UK, the EU and numerous European nations were turned away en masse while attempting to attend the trial of Michael Kovrig. The International Crisis Group analyst and a former Canadian diplomat was accused of spying on state secrets.
“Michael Kovrig has been arbitrarily detained for more than two years now, precisely 833 days,” Jim Nickel, the charge d’affaires at the Canadian embassy, told reporters outside Beijing No. 2 People’s Intermediate Court. “This is completely unacceptable, as is the lack of transparency in these court proceedings.”
Photo: AFP
Also present was Acting Deputy Chief of the US Mission in Beijing William Klein, who said that Washington stood “shoulder to shoulder” with Ottawa on the issue.
The court cited national security as the reason for barring outside observers at the trial.
Kovrig’s hearing comes days after a two-hour spying trial for another Canadian, Michael Spavor. China seized the pair in December 2018 after Ottawa detained Huawei Technologies Co (華為) chief financial executive Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟) in response to a US extradition request.
A verdict on Kovrig’s case is to be delivered at a later date, the court said in a statement posted on its Web site last night.
The US is seeking the extradition of Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, to try her on fraud charges. China has linked the cases of the two men to Meng, with a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman saying last year that halting her extradition “could open up space for resolution to the situation of the two Canadians.”
Canada sought access to the hearings under the Vienna Convention for Consular Relations and a two-way consular agreement it signed with China, which guarantees access to court proceedings against each other’s citizens.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) told a regular press briefing yesterday that “Canada has brought together some other countries’ diplomats and points fingers at China’s handling of individual cases.”
“That is interference in China’s judicial sovereignty,” she said.
Last month, Canada and 57 other governments signed a declaration against detaining each others’ citizens for geopolitical leverage, a move that was seen as aimed at nations like China and Iran.
A spokesperson at China’s embassy in Ottawa said Beijing was unhappy with the campaign and that “ganging up” on countries was pointless.
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