Chinese Court Falsely Charges Canadian Citizen As Diplomatic Tactic
-
Alaina
- . August 11, 2021
- . Update: August 11, 2021 8:08 pm
The Chinese court has finally sentenced a Canadian citizen to 11 years of imprisonment in spying charges to a case linked to their tech giant Huawei. Michael Spavor was detained in 2018 and since then has been embroiled in a controversy and false charges of spying. This has been seen as China’s retaliation against Canada who detained of their top officials in their territory.
The person is question was Meng Wanzhou who was arrested to face US criminal charges. She was arrested over charges that the Chinese tech giant had violated sanctions levied over Iran and conducted business with Tehran. As the chief financial officer, she was held responsible for such activity. Meng is also deputy chairman of the board and the daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei.
Beijing is now seemingly putting pressure on Canada to release Ms. Wanzhou in the pretext of holding Spavor imprisoned on false charges. Strangely, in China itself, diplomats from 25 different countries have been assembling in retaliation to China’s arbitrary action against a foreign national on their soil.
Spavor was arrested along with Michael Kovrig on what is being widely called as ‘hostile politics.’ Another Chinese court has recently rejected the appeal of a third Canadian whose prison term in a drug case was abruptly increased to death following the executive’s arrest.
Strangely, Canadian officials were refused permission to attend the proceedings of Mr. Spavor’s hearing. He has been falsely accused of stealing state secrets. The hearing went on for almost two hours. No verdict was announced in March this year when the sessions court was in progress. On their official website the Intermediate People’s Court of Dandong had even then said it had held a closed-door hearing against Spavor.
The sentence announced, now holds precariously on Spavor’s head, a simple way of creating diplomatic pressure on the Canadian government. Even Mr. Kovrig has been charged with false allegations of spying.
