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Canada warns other countries of risk to their citizens who are in China
Canada’s foreign minister Marc Garneau fears many nations that are doing business with Beijing could end up seeing their citizens in China getting detained in case there are major disagreements
As international action against the Chinese government has started to coalesce around the detention and trials of two Canadian nationals jailed in China, Canada’s foreign minister Marc Garneau warned other nations that doing business with Beijing could result in their citizens getting detained there.
On a day of quick developments that witnessed the trial in Beijing of a second Canadian man, Michael Kovrig, Canada joined the US and the UK in imposing sanctions on four top Chinese officials and an entity over human rights violations in Xinjiang province.
Garneau told CBC, “My advice to all other countries in the world is - if you are doing business with China and you have citizens of your country in China, and you have disagreements with them, there is the possibility that your citizens could be detained.”
In a statement issued earlier in the day by Global Affairs Canada, the country’s foreign ministry, Garneau said, “We are deeply troubled by the total lack of transparency surrounding these hearings and we continue to work towards an immediate end to their arbitrary detention.”
While one of the detained Canadians, Michael Spavor, was tried in a Beijing court on Friday, Kovrig appeared before a judge on Monday.
The two Canadians were arrested in December 2018. They were later charged with spying in China and passing on sensitive information to entities outside the country.
It is widely believed that their arrest was politically motivated and came in retaliation after Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecom giant Huawei, was arrested and detained in Vancouver just days before on an extradition request from the US. Wanzhou was charged with fraud and conspiracy for trying to bypass US sanctions on Iran.
Speaking at a press event in Trois-Rivières in Quebec province, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the “arbitrary detention” of the two Canadians was “unacceptable”.
Both Trudeau and Garneau thanked diplomats from two dozen nations for standing in unity with Canada outside the courthouse, even as they were barred from entering the premises.
“The eyes of the world are on these cases and proceedings and I want to thank our international partners for their continued support and solidarity,” Garneau said.
In a separate statement following the imposition of sanctions on Chinese officials, Garneau said, “We remain deeply concerned by the egregious human rights violations that are taking place in Xinjiang at the hands of the Chinese state.”
