China’s embassy in Ottawa has confirmed executions of four dual Canadian-Chinese citizens for drug offences.
China executed four Canadian citizens for drug-related offences earlier this year, despite multiple pleas for clemency, Canada’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said.
Foreign Minister Melanie Joly told reporters on Wednesday that she “strongly condemns” the executions, and that both she and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had asked for leniency in each case.
Joly did not provide further details about the four Canadians due to privacy requests from their families.
Canada’s Global Affairs spokesperson Charlotte MacLeod said Ottawa would continue to provide consular assistance to the families, and it “remains steadfast in its opposition to the use of the death penalty in all cases, everywhere”.
While executions of Westerners in China are relatively rare, the four Canadians were also dual Chinese citizens – a status that Beijing does not recognise.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa told Canadian media that the four had been granted a fair trial and due process in “strict accordance with the law”.
“China is a rule-of-law country. Whoever violates the law of China must be held accountable in accordance with the law,” the embassy said in a statement published by The Globe and Mail newspaper.
“The facts of the crimes committed by the Canadian nationals involved in the cases are clear, and the evidence is solid and sufficient,” the statement also said.
Ketty Nivyabandi, secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada’s English-speaking section, said that the “shocking and inhumane executions of Canadian citizens by Chinese authorities should be a wake-up call for Canada”.
About 100 Canadians are currently held in China, according to Canadian media, many of them on drug offences. One of the highest-profile cases is that of Robert Schellenberg, who was originally sentenced in 2014 to a 15-year prison term. His sentence was later changed to the death penalty after a retrial in January 2019.
Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of United States law enforcement in late 2018, as well as Beijing’s detention of two Canadians on espionage charges the same year, and allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian elections, has led to a sharp decline in Sino-Canadian relations.
The tension now appears to have spread to the trade relationship between both countries.
Earlier this month, Beijing announced tariffs on Canadian agricultural goods after Ottawa imposed a 100 percent levy on Chinese-made electric vehicles last year.
Peter Humphrey, a former British investigator who advocates for foreigners detained in China, told The Globe and Mail that for China to “execute a significant number of foreign citizens” in quick succession was “absolutely unprecedented”.
“This is really a strong signal that China has no intention of patching things up with Canada,” he said.