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China Sentences Canadian Businessman to 11 Years in Prison China Sentences Canadian Businessman to 11 Years in Prison
(about 7 hours later)
A court in China sentenced a Canadian businessman, Michael Spavor, to 11 years in prison after declaring him guilty of spying on Wednesday, deepening a split with Canada, which has condemned the case as political hostage-taking. For years, as Michael Spavor tried to expand his business in North Korea, China appeared to offer the stable base from where he could set up deals, tours and even diplomatic forays into the North involving Dennis Rodman, the retired basketball star.
Mr. Spavor has the right to appeal the judgment, but Chinese courts rarely overturn criminal judgments, and his fate could rest on deal-making among Beijing, Ottawa and Washington at a time when Beijing’s relations with Western powers are particularly tense. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, in a statement, denounced Mr. Spavor’s sentence as “absolutely unacceptable and unjust.” On Wednesday, Mr. Spavor became a warning about the growing risks of operating in China, as tensions with the West rise and Beijing takes an increasingly combative approach to defending its interests.
In a brief online statement, the court in Dandong, a northeast Chinese city next to North Korea where Mr. Spavor had often done business, also said that he would be deported, but gave no details about the timing. The court said it had found Mr. Spavor guilty of obtaining state secrets and providing them to a foreign recipient, but offered no details. A court in northeastern China, where Mr. Spavor has lived, sentenced him to 11 years in prison after declaring him guilty of spying, deepening a rift with Canada, which has condemned the case as political hostage-taking.
The sentencing suggests that a court in Beijing is likely to announce a similar guilty judgment soon in a parallel spying case against another Canadian, Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat arrested about the same time as Mr. Spavor, in late 2018. The detentions occurred less than two weeks after the police in Vancouver detained a Chinese telecom executive, Meng Wanzhou, at the request of American prosecutors. To China’s critics, the sentence sent an ominous message that the Chinese government under Xi Jinping is willing to add prison sentences to its political armory for pressuring Western governments to make concessions.
Ms. Meng remains on bail in Vancouver and has been fighting extradition to the United States, where she faces fraud charges linked to her role as the chief financial officer of the Chinese tech giant Huawei. Mr. Spavor’s conviction came amid closing arguments at the Supreme Court of British Columbia over whether Ms. Meng can be extradited. The Canadian government said that Mr. Spavor’s prison term was the Chinese government’s latest move in a campaign to win the release of Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese telecommunications executive held in Canada and facing extradition to the United States. Michael Kovrig, another Canadian arrested in China at around the same time as Mr. Spavor in 2018 and accused of spying, is likely to also face conviction and sentencing soon.
The detentions of the two Michaels and Ms. Meng have opened a rancorous rift between Beijing and Ottawa and have added to the growing tensions between China and Canada’s democratic allies. Mr. Spavor’s imprisonment raises the pressure on the Canadian government and the Biden administration to negotiate with China over Ms. Meng. Canada has emphasized that it has the support of allies, and on Wednesday diplomats from more than two dozen countries gathered in a show of solidarity at the country’s embassy in Beijing. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada criticized the prosecution of both men.
In commenting on Mr. Spavor’s sentencing, Prime Minister Trudeau criticized the legal process that had ensnared the Canadians. “Our top priority remains securing their immediate release,” Mr. Trudeau said in a statement Wednesday after the sentencing of Mr. Spavor. “We will continue working around the clock to bring them home as soon as possible.”
“The verdict for Mr. Spavor comes after more than two and a half years of arbitrary detention, a lack of transparency in the legal process, and a trial that did not satisfy even the minimum standards required by international law,” he said in the statement. He said the government would keep working to bring the Canadians home. President Biden has said he will seek to secure their release. But that could require the United States to drop or modify its case against Ms. Meng, so that she can return to China. She faces fraud charges, which she denies, linked to her role as chief financial officer of the Chinese tech giant Huawei.
Outside the court in Dandong, Dominic Barton, the Canadian ambassador to China, told reporters he had met with Mr. Spavor after the sentence was announced and conveyed a few messages from him. “One, thank you for all your support. It means a lot to me,” Mr. Barton said, citing Mr. Spavor. “Two, I am in good spirits; and three, I want to get home.” “Call them hostages, call them what you like, but their fate — and this is how China wants it to look — is intertwined with Ms. Meng’s fate,” John Kamm, an American businessman and founder of the Dui Hua Foundation, which seeks to win the release of prisoners in China, especially in human rights cases, said by telephone.
The sentence will fuel anger in Canada, where public attitudes toward the Chinese government have hardened over the prosecution of Mr. Spavor and Mr. Kovrig. In particular, many critics have contrasted the harsh conditions the Canadians have faced with Ms. Meng’s luxurious lifestyle. “If Ms. Meng is released to go home to China, then you could see a fairly quick resolution for Spavor and Kovrig,” he said. “It’s been a drip, drip, drip process of constant pressure.”
The Canadians have been held in secret jails for more than two years, cut off from their families and with limited legal and consular access. The two were tried in short and opaque trials in March. Ms. Meng, meanwhile, has been out on a bail of 10 million Canadian dollars (about $8 million) in a seven-bedroom mansion in a rarefied Vancouver neighborhood, where she has had private painting lessons and massages. She wears a GPS tracker on her ankle and has been able to move around Vancouver. The specifics of the charges against Mr. Spavor are unclear. The court in Dandong said in a one-sentence statement that he was guilty of obtaining state secrets and illegally passing them to an unnamed foreign recipient. Mr. Spavor may not have to serve out his full sentence; the court said that he would be deported, though it gave no details about the timing.
Chinese officials have accused Canada of entrapping Ms. Meng and have denied that Mr. Spavor and Mr. Kovrig are being kept as hostages to pressure Ottawa to let Ms. Meng return to China. Canada’s ambassador to Beijing, Dominic Barton, who traveled to Dandong to attend the hearing, later told journalists that the prosecutors had accused Mr. Spavor of taking pictures “around airports or those places where one should not take photos” in China, including of military aircraft. Mr. Barton also said he had met with Mr. Spavor afterward, and that he had said he was in good spirits.
“This is nothing short of a political incident in which Canada played a very disgraceful role as an accomplice,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said in March about Ms. Meng’s case. “We urge the Canadian side to immediately release Ms. Meng Wanzhou.” David Meale, the chargé d’affaires at the United States Embassy in Beijing, condemned the prosecutions as “a blatant attempt to use human beings as bargaining leverage.”
But Mr. Trudeau has said that Mr. Spavor and Mr. Kovrig were arrested on “trumped-up charges” as “an attempt to try to pressure us to release the executive.” He has defended Ms. Meng’s detention as simply an application of the rule of law and Canadian extradition treaty obligations with the United States. The Chinese government has denied that Mr. Spavor and Mr. Kovrig are being kept as political hostages. In demanding Ms. Meng’s release, Chinese officials have repeatedly described the executive as a victim of American overreach. Beijing has accused Canada of entrapping Ms. Meng and serving as an accomplice to the United States.
The two Canadians faced trial in March, and diplomats from Canada and other supportive governments were excluded from attending the hearings. Mr. Spavor’s conviction came amid closing arguments at the Supreme Court of British Columbia over whether Ms. Meng can be extradited. Canadian officials have said that the timing of Mr. Spavor’s sentencing, as well as a hearing in the case of another Canadian, Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, on Tuesday, was no coincidence.
Another Canadian caught in the tensions, Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, was initially sentenced to 15 years in prison for methamphetamine trafficking. But in 2019 he was handed a death sentence in a one-day retrial, one month after the Canadian authorities arrested Ms. Meng. On Tuesday, a Chinese court upheld the death sentence. In Mr. Schellenberg’s case, another court in northeast China upheld a death sentence that was handed down in a one-day retrial in 2019, one month after the police in Canada arrested Ms. Meng. Mr. Schellenberg had initially been sentenced to 15 years in prison for methamphetamine trafficking, but then appealed.
In 2018, Hu Xijin, the editor of the Communist Party-run Global Times newspaper, warned that if Ms. Meng were extradited to the United States, “China’s revenge will be far worse than detaining a Canadian.” The latest developments will fuel anger in Canada, where attitudes toward the Chinese government have hardened over the prosecution of Mr. Spavor and Mr. Kovrig. Critics have contrasted the harsh conditions the Canadians have faced with Ms. Meng’s opulent lifestyle and ready access to lawyers.
Ties between Canada and China have soured since the 2018 detentions, reflecting Canadian anger over China’s early mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak and its sweeping crackdown on pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong, a former British colony that has been the source of many migrants leaving for Canada. Mr. Spavor and Mr. Kovrig, a former diplomat, have been held in detention centers for more than two years, cut off from their families and with limited legal and consular access. The two were tried in short and opaque trials in March.
The Chinese government’s ire with Canada grew after Mr. Trudeau’s government imposed sanctions over Xinjiang, the northwest Chinese region where largely Muslim minorities have enduring sweeping detentions. Ms. Meng has been out on a bail of 10 million Canadian dollars, or about $8 million, in a seven-bedroom mansion in a rarefied Vancouver neighborhood, where she has had private painting lessons and massages. She wears a GPS tracker on her left ankle and has been able to move around Vancouver.
The two Canadians were both expatriates using their expertise in Asia when they were bundled away by Chinese state security officers. Mr. Kovrig had worked since 2017 as a senior adviser for the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that provides analysis and advice on conflicts across the world, including China and North Korea. Mr. Spavor’s family, which has said little publicly about him or the trial, released a statement through a lawyer, striking a somewhat hopeful note: “While we disagree with the charges, we realize that this is the next step in the process to bring Michael home.”
Mr. Spavor who speaks fluent Korean, including the distinctive dialect of the North, promoted cultural tours and business contacts with North Korea. He won passing celebrity for helping to organize visits to North Korea in 2013 and 2014 by Dennis Rodman, the flamboyant former basketball star. Mr. Spavor forged a career doing business with North Korea and living in Dandong, a Chinese city looking across the Yalu River into the North. But he appeared much more interested in people and adventures than high politics, his friends have said.
Mr. Kovrig has been kept so isolated in a detention center that he did not know details of the coronavirus pandemic until October, when Canadian diplomats informed him during a virtual visit, his wife, Vina Nadjibulla, has said. “Spavor did not come off as very political, or ideological for that matter,” said John Delury, a professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University in Seoul. “Creating bridges with North Koreans is incredibly challenging, mostly thankless work, but Michael approached it with an entrepreneurial spirit.”
The sentencing announcement did not reveal details of the accusations against Mr. Kovrig or Mr. Spavor. A report issued in 2019 by a news service for the Chinese Communist Party’s law-and-order committee said that Mr. Spavor had been a source for Mr. Kovrig, who was a prominent expert on North Korea, the South China Sea and other regional trouble spots that involve China. The families of both men have vigorously maintained that they are innocent. In 2013, Mr. Spavor helped organize a visit to North Korea by Mr. Rodman, the retired basketball player, and then a second visit the following year. Mr. Spavor’s company, Paektu Cultural Exchange, posted a picture showing Mr. Spavor with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, on Mr. Kim’s yacht in 2013.
Any hopes of early release for Mr. Kovrig and Mr. Spavor may rest on negotiations between Beijing and Washington. Western governments — including Australia, Britain, France and Germany — have voiced anger about China’s treatment of the two Canadians. But the voice that matters most is President Biden, who has said he would seek to secure their release. Mr. Spavor’s supporters have said that his interest in North Korea reflected his affection for its people, going back to when he was a student in South Korea in the 1990s. Mr. Spavor later did a stint as an English-language teacher in Pyongyang and honed the distinctive Northern dialect of Korean.
“Human beings are not bartering chips,” Mr. Biden said in February, after talks with Mr. Trudeau. “We’re going to work together until we get their safe return.” “Along with pictures of Michael with the likes of Dennis Rodman, there are a million more pictures of Michael posing with common North Koreans,” John M. Glionna, a journalist who first met Mr. Spavor in 2010, wrote on a website dedicated to securing Mr. Spavor’s freedom. “Michael cared about people trapped in a country that has become a little more than a political jail.”
China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, appears unlikely to offer concessions on the Canadians without some compromise and, ultimately, the release of Ms. Meng. The fraud charges against her relate to Huawei’s dealings with Iran, which officials in Washington have said tried to evade United States sanctions. In 2016, a court in Dandong sentenced another Canadian, Kevin Garratt, to eight years in prison on spying charges — but then deported him shortly after the sentencing. Mr. Garratt was detained around a month after the Canadian authorities arrested a Chinese national on an extradition warrant for spying charges in the United States.
Mr. Spavor may not have to serve out his full sentence. In 2016, a court in Dandong sentenced another Canadian, Kevin Garratt, to eight years in prison on spying charges but then deported him shortly after the sentencing. Mr. Garratt said the charges were trumped up. “My message to the Spavor family is: ‘Keep holding on to hope. I didn’t believe I would be deported. It is going to end,” Mr. Garratt said when reached by phone on Wednesday. “To Michael, I say: ‘You can do it. You survived almost 1,000 days, you’ll make it through it.’”
Mr. Garratt, reached by phone on Wednesday, said Mr. Spavor and his family should not give up. “My message to the Spavor family is: ‘Keep holding on to hope. I didn’t believe I would be deported. It is going to end,” he said. “To Michael, I say: ‘You can do it. You survived almost 1,000 days, you’ll make it through it.’”