Former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig said in an interview on Monday that he suffered psychological torture during his detention by Chinese authorities.
Kovrig and Canadian businessman, Michael Spavor, were arrested in December 2018, shortly after the arrest and detention of Huawei CFO, Meng Wanzhou, at a Vancouver airport by Canadian officials became public. In 2020, The Chinese government charged both Canadians with espionage, a move widely seen as retaliation for the charges against Meng. The Chinese government has nonetheless insisted that there is no connection between the two events.
In 2021, a Chinese court held secretive hearings and found the two Canadian citizens guilty of espionage and possession of state secrets, sentencing them to 11 years in prison. According to a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, the two men “confessed to the fact of the crime and wrote the confession and repentance materials in their own handwriting.” However, after US officials withdrew their extradition request for Huawei CFO Meng in September 2021, both Kovrig and Spavor were released and returned to Canada. According to Chinese authorities, the two men applied for bail pending trial on the grounds of illness. The relevant courts approved the bail pending trial a diagnosis by professional medical institutions and a guarantee provided by the Canadian Ambassador.
In his interview on Monday Kovrig emphasized that under United Nations guidelines, solitary confinement must not exceed 15 days, as anything longer is deemed psychological torture. Yet, since 2019, he has been held in separate detention in China for nearly six months. He also recognized that “[t]he Canadian government was not prepared at the time, and the U.S government was not prepared, so it took them a long time to understand what to do.”
On Tuesday, Lin Jian, the Foreign Ministry spokesman of China, responded to the interview by stressing that China is a nation that upholds the rule of law, with its judicial authorities managing cases in strict accordance with legal standards.
According to Article 29 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (VCDR), the person of a diplomatic agent is inviolable. Moreover, Article 31 provides that “diplomatic agents enjoy immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the receiving State.”In diplomatic practice, when diplomats violate the host country’s criminal laws, they are typically immune from judicial jurisdiction. As a result, the host country usually refrains from filing a lawsuit and instead addresses the issue through diplomatic channels.
Chinese authorities maintain that at the time of Kovrig’s arrest, he was not serving in a diplomatic capacity, having entered China with an ordinary passport and a business visa. Since Kovrig’s activities posed a threat to China’s national security, prompting the relevant state security agencies to take necessary measures in accordance with domestic law. As a result, they have argued that he was not entitled to diplomatic immunity under the VCDR.
