Ankit Panda

Opinion | China, the hostage diplomacy isn’t working. It’s time to free Kovrig, Spavor and Yang

Detentions lay bare the party’s brutish approach to statecraft. If it wants to be seen as anything other than a barbarous regime, it can’t target the innocent

Those who know and worked with the two Canadians and Australian citizen must continue to speak out to ensure their plight is not forgotten

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People hold placards calling for China to release Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig outside a court hearing for Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver in March. Photo: Reuters

Ankit Panda

Published: 8:00pm, 14 Dec 2019Updated: 11:09pm, 14 Dec 2019

I last saw Michael Kovrig in Italy in October 2018. I last saw Michael Spavor in South Korea in November 2018. Within weeks of us bidding farewell, both of them were picked up by Chinese authorities, detained first without charges for the near-maximum duration that arbitrary detention is legally permissible in China. Thereafter, the two were stuck with exaggerated and outrageous charges concerning espionage activities.

In reality, their only “crime” – if it can be called that – was being Canadian. Kovrig and Spavor were taken hostage and the ransom for their release, even if officially unsaid, is the end of legal troubles for Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese technology giant Huawei, who was charged last year with knowingly spearheading the company’s violation of US sanctions. Both men were arrested shortly after Meng’s initial arrest.

As much as anything else, this hostage diplomacy has laid bare the Communist Party’s brutish approach to statecraft. The gambit hasn’t worked because despite the pain and abuse both men have endured, Canada has remained committed to letting the rule of law run its course on Meng’s still-pending extradition to the United States.

Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou is out on bail and remains under partial house arrest in Vancouver after she was detained last year. Photo: AP

The two men have had consular visits from Canadian officials, but accounts of their treatment are shocking. This July, it was reported that Chinese authorities had seized Kovrig’s reading glasses, denying him what little escapism might have been possible in his otherwise horrendous predicament.

If President Xi Jinping’s China is to be seen as anything other than a hostage-taker, it must release both men immediately. China cannot give either of them back that one year of their lives, but it can recognise that there is nothing to be gained from making an example of them. The odds of the Canadian government paying the ransom that is being tacitly demanded are nil.

Beyond both Michaels, the Chinese government’s hostage-taking has also affected others. Yang Hengjun, a man who I never met but a gifted writer whom I occasionally edited, has also been taken into Chinese custody. Yang, an Australian citizen of Chinese origin, has reportedly been tortured, underscoring how the party reserves special punishment for those of Chinese ethnicity it deems to have transgressed its red lines. He too has been charged with espionage.