A Chinese court on Monday tried a former Canadian diplomat on charges of espionage, Canadian officials said, the second such trial in recent days and likely to intensify tensions between China, Canada and the United States.
A Beijing court presided over the trial of former diplomat Michael Kovrig, who was detained by Chinese officials in late 2018, shortly after Canada arrested a senior executive at Chinese technology company Huawei at the request of the United States.
The trial was conducted in secret, according to the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, with Chinese officials preventing foreign diplomats and journalists from participating. In a show of support for Kovrig, more than two dozen diplomats representing 26 countries, including Canada and the United States, tried to gain access to the court in Beijing on Monday, but were turned down by security officials.
Kovrig’s friends, family and former colleagues said he was innocent.
“From the moment he was arrested, the political nature of his case was clear,” said Richard Atwood, interim president of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research organization where Kovrig worked as a consultant. “Michael must be released immediately so that he can return home and his loved ones.”
He is the second Canadian to be tried in recent days on espionage charges, after Michael Spavor, a Canadian businessman, who was also arrested in 2018, appeared in court on Friday in Dandong, a city in the northeast of the country. That verdict would be announced at a later date, the court said.
“The arbitrary detention of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig for more than two years is now completely unacceptable,” said Jim Nickel, a senior official at the Canadian embassy in Beijing who tried to gain access to the court on Monday, in a statement.
The lawsuits against Kovrig and Spavor unfolded against a backdrop of growing tensions over China’s increasingly assertive behavior on the global stage. Critics have labeled China’s action “hostage diplomacy” and called on Canada and the United States to work to ensure the two men are released.
Canadian and American officials described the men’s detention as arbitrary and part of China’s efforts to secure the release in Canada of Chinese executive Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s founder. Meng faces charges of fraud in the United States, which seeks his extradition.
Kovrig and Spavor’s arrests were expected when American and Chinese diplomats met in Alaska last week. But the meeting was fraught with tensions and the two sides left without any joint statement of their willingness to work together.
American officials on Monday denounced China’s decision to proceed with the trials. “The charges are a blatant attempt to use human beings as a bargaining chip,” a spokesman for the United States Embassy in Beijing said in a statement. “The practice of arbitrary detention to influence foreign governments is completely unacceptable.”
China defended its handling of the cases, saying that Canadians violated Chinese law.
“Chinese judicial bodies handle cases independently, according to the law and fully guarantee the legal rights of the individuals involved,” said Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, at a news conference in Beijing on Friday. -market.