Chicoms may be retaliating for detention of Huawei CFO
Update: The detained Canadian businessman Michael Spavor, who worked with North Korea, is being investigated on suspicion of “harming China’s security”, China said on Thursday, days after a former Canadian diplomat disappeared in the escalating diplomatic row between Beijing and Ottawa.
The state security bureau in the northeastern Chinese city of Dandong, which borders North Korea, has been investigating Spavor since Dec. 10, an official news site for the Liaoning province government said.
Canada has been unable to contact Spavor since he notified the government that he was being questioned by Chinese authorities, Foreign Ministry spokesman Guillaume Bérubé said in statement issued in Canada. Canadian officials were working hard to ascertain Spavor’s whereabouts and would continue to raise the issue with the Chinese government, Bérubé said.
The announcement follows the detention in Beijing on Monday of former diplomat Michael Kovrig, who works for the International Crisis Group (ICG). According to Reuters, state media in China has reported Kovrig is being investigated on the same charges.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang, asked about Spavor’s detention, said both he and Kovrig were suspected of harming national security, reiterating state media announcements.
“The legal rights and interests of these two Canadians have been safeguarded,” Lu told a daily news briefing. “These two cases are in the process of being investigated separately.”
The Canadian embassy has been notified of the detentions, he added, declining to provide further details of the investigations but added that he had not heard of any other cases of Canadians being investigated.
Asked if Meng’s release would see the two Canadians released, Lu reiterated that Meng’s arrest was mistaken action and Canada should immediately let her go. He said authorities had taken measures “according to the law” in the Canadians’ cases, and China welcomed foreign visitors, and they had nothing to fear so long as they obeyed the law.
Meanwhile, Hu Xijin, editor of the state-backed Global Times, a nationalistic tabloid, said on the Weibo social media platform the Chinese government would never concede that the Canadians’ detentions were related to Meng’s case.
“But the use of a complete set of laws to prove the rationale for arrest is one and the same as what the U. S. and Canada did to Meng Wanzhou,” he wrote. -End of Update-
For a trade war that was supposed to be between the US and China, Canada has found itself increasingly in the middle of the crossfire.
And so after the arrest of a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing in retaliation for the detention of the Huawei CFO in Vancouver, Canada, said a second person has been questioned by Chinese authorities, further heightening tensions between the two countries.
