Christmas card protest aims to raise men's plight (and China's fury)

London: Australians are being urged to flood the desk of China's ambassador in Canberra, Cheng Jingye, with Christmas cards as a way of protesting against the ongoing detention of Canada's "two Michaels".

Exactly two years ago on December 10, which is also Human Rights Day, Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were arrested in China shortly after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada.

Detained in China: Canadian nationals Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.Credit: AP

Their arbitrary detention is widely viewed to be hostage diplomacy in revenge for Meng's arrest because China has never provided any evidence to support its allegations that the two Canadians were threatening national security. They have never been charged.

The pair is held in torturous conditions while Meng, by contrast, is allowed to live under house arrest in Canada. She faces accusations in the United States of committing fraud to circumvent US sanctions against Iran.

The novel campaign mimics one conducted in the late 1960s when people from all around the world sent Christmas cards to Anthony Grey in Beijing via Chinese embassies around the world.

Grey was a reporter for Reuters in 1967 when he was jailed for two years in retaliation for the arrest of Xinhua journalists in then British-controlled Hong Kong.

Looking pale and tense, Anthony Grey faces a barrage of photographers after arriving at London Airport in 1969.

Former British diplomat, Charles Parton, became friends with Kovrig during their respective postings to Beijing, when Kovrig worked as a diplomat with the Canadian embassy until he joined International Crisis Group as the organisation's north-east asia adviser.

He said he was inspired to launch the card campaign after re-reading Grey's book Hostage in Peking in which the journalist recounts how, while he never received the 3000 Christmas cards Britons sent to him, their festive messages had made a powerful point.

"Hundreds were also reportedly sent from Australia, the United States, France, Germany, Belgium and other countries, even from India and Pakistan," Grey wrote.

"All were carefully fielded by the Peking authorities and what exactly happened to them is not known. But the point was made."

Anthony Grey, bearded in centre, leads a delegation from Amnesty International to the London embassies of countries with long-serving political prisoners in 1971.Credit: PA

Parton said people should send a Christmas card with a message of support to the Michaels as well as one urging their release and to their local embassy with a request that it be forwarded on to the Canadians.

But he said it was essential people photograph their cards and messages and post them to their social media accounts with the hashtag #FreeChinaHostages so that Chinese officials could not deny receiving them.

Canada's former ambassador to China Guy Saint-Jacques is one of a string of prominent figures to have joined the campaign.

Parton told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that while he was under no illusion the campaign would lead the two Michaels to freedom it was vital to take a stand.

"When my friend Michael comes out, they'll be fairly psychologically upset but they'll at least be able to say 'a lot of people cared and not just in Canada but around the world'."

"Is it going to change Chinese Communist Party policy and get the Michaels out any earlier? No. But a stand has to be made, there is a values war, we can't just brush over that."

"And there's a secondary aim, to make the point to more people in our own societies — to the people, the press and the politicians — that we find this behaviour truly despicable and that this is the nature of the CCP beast and you'd better get used to it and you'd better start coming up with policies that take account of that."

Parton who last spoke to Kovrig three years ago said Australians, who have been on the front line of China's increasing economic and diplomatic aggression since the coronavirus pandemic, had extra cause to protest given China has also detained two Australian citizens, journalist Cheng Lei and writer Yang Hengjun.

"Australians are by nature people who don't take to this bad behaviour — indecent behaviour," he said.

"They react to it in a very forthright manner which is great so I think it will strike a chord, particularly at a time when Australia is under the cosh."

In recent days there has been speculation in the American press that US authorities could let Meng return home to China in exchange for a mea culpa.

Parton said Canada should not to swap Meng, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, for the two Michaels.

Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies.Credit: Bloomberg

"Michael's my friend and I wish him out as soon as possible, but if you give into blackmail that isn't helpful to potential hostages in future."

Former British Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, who founded the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China that last week launched a global campaign encouraging people to buy Australian wine as a way of standing up to Beijing's bullying, said he had sent a card to China's ambassador in the UK.

"As we celebrate Christmas with our families, it's right to spare a thought for Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavrov who will be spending a Christmas filled with fear about their future," Duncan Smith told this masthead.

"That's why by uniting together to draw attention to their plight we, all of us, can put pressure on the Chinese Communist Party to stop their arrogant behaviour and release them."