Canadian man ‘suffered psychological torture’ while jailed in China

Ottawa: A Canadian man detained by China for more than 1000 days said he was put into solitary confinement for months and interrogated for up to nine hours every day, treatment he said amounted to psychological torture.

Michael Kovrig, speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp in an interview released on Monday, also said he had missed the birth of his daughter and only met her for the first time when she was 2½ years old.

Kovrig and fellow Canadian Michael Spavor were taken into custody in December 2018, shortly after Canadian police detained Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei, on a US warrant. Both men were accused of spying.

Michael Kovrig, an adviser with the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based NGO, speaks during an interview in Hong Kong in 2018 before his arrest.Credit: AP

“I still carry a lot of pain around with me and that can be heavy at times,” Kovrig said in his first substantial comments since he and Spavor were released in September 2021.

Kovrig noted that United Nations guidelines say prisoners should not be put into solitary confinement for more than 15 days in a row.

“More than that is considered psychological torture. I was there for nearly six months,” said Kovrig, a former diplomat who had been working for a think-tank as an adviser when arrested.

Kovrig said there was no daylight in the solitary cell, where the fluorescent lights were kept on 24 hours a day. At one point, his food ration was cut to three bowls of rice a day.

Michael Kovrig embraces his wife, Vina Nadjibulla, after arriving home from China in 2021.Credit: AP

“It was psychologically absolutely, the most gruelling, painful thing I’ve ever been through,” he said.

“It’s a combination of solitary confinement, total isolation, and relentless interrogation for six to nine hours every day,” he said. “They are trying to bully and torment and terrorise and coerce you ... into accepting their false version of reality.”

Kovrig and Spavor were released on the same day the US Justice Department dropped its extradition request for Meng and she returned to China.

Michael Spavor was sentenced to 11 years in prison in China for alleged spying.Credit: AP

The Chinese embassy in Ottawa, responding to Kovrig’s interview, said he and Spavor had been suspected of engaging in activities endangering China’s national security. Chinese judicial authorities handled the cases in strict accordance with the law, it said in a statement.

Bilateral ties are chilly. China this month opened a one-year anti-dumping investigation into imports of rapeseed from Canada, just weeks after Ottawa announced 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles.

Kovrig’s partner was six months pregnant at the time of his arrest. She played their daughter recordings of his voice and showed pictures of her father so she would recognise him when they finally met.

“I’ll never forget that sense of wonder, of everything being new and wonderful again and pushing my daughter on a swing that had her saying to her mother ‘Mummy, I’m so happy’,” he said.

Reuters