A group of mainly Western countries led by Canada formed a coalition against detaining foreigners under diplomatic influence, aiming at a practice that diplomats say was used by Beijing and Tehran.
Fifty-eight nations, including the USA, Japan, Australia and almost all members of the European Union, have signed a declaration that is non-binding and has no tools for enforcement. The Canadian Foreign Ministry, which is launching the initiative publicly on Monday, says the goal is not a single nation, but aims to exert diplomatic pressure on the issue.
Canadian Foreign Minister Marc Garneau told reporters on Sunday that he is seeking support from other countries to join the effort to prevent “illegal and immoral” arrests. By joining other nations, he said, “we believe that we have a better chance of putting pressure on countries that practice arbitrary detentions,” he said.
Western diplomats have accused China, Iran, Russia and North Korea in recent years of holding foreigners as a bargaining chip.
Officials from dozens of countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, spoke at a virtual conference organized by Canada on Monday morning to declare their support for the suspension of arbitrary detentions.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said at the conference that the country will not tolerate “the use of arbitrary detention, especially as a threat or a means of influencing others, is cruel. It’s wrong.”
Two Canadians – former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor – were detained in China in December 2018 and accused of spying. They are at the center of an impasse between Canada, the United States and China. Canada accused China of detaining the two men in retaliation for the arrest of a Chinese Huawei Technologies Co. executive, Meng Wanzhou, in a U.S. extradition request.
Shortly after Monday’s conference, the Chinese embassy in Canada released to the media a copy of a story published on Sunday by the state newspaper Global Times, which dismissed the coalition’s efforts as an “aggressive and reckless” attack designed to stigmatize and press China.
US Vice President Kamala Harris told Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a phone call earlier this month that the United States would do everything it could to free the two men. The State Department last week asked China to release them, criticizing China’s “use of coercion as a political tool”.
China says the men are suspected of committing crimes and that Meng’s arrest was political.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a phone call with his Russian counterpart earlier this month, called for the release of two American citizens detained in Russia. In July, a Russian court convicted Trevor Reed, an American student and former Marine, for endangering the lives of two policemen. A month earlier, a Russian court sentenced former US Marine Paul Whelan to 16 years in prison for spying. Both deny the charges.
“The secretary reiterated President Biden’s determination to protect American citizens and to take a strong stand in defending US interests in response to Russian actions that harm us or our allies,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price, in a statement.
“This includes the release of Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed so that they can return to their families in the United States.”
In December, the UK Parliament’s foreign affairs committee asked the government to declare as “State taking hostages” what it described as “arbitrary detention of foreigners in Iran”. The committee called for a “more decisive and coordinated approach” from the UK Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in 2016 and sentenced to five years in prison after a court found her guilty of conspiring to overthrow the Iranian government, a charge she denies.
Write to James Marson at [email protected] and Jacquie McNish at [email protected]
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Published in the February 16, 2021 print edition as ‘West assaults detention of foreigners for leverage purposes’.