Michael Kovrig, Michael Spavor have not been tried, Ottawa confirms

It’s been two years since Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig were detained by Chinese authorities. Experts and politicians are now calling for the government to take stronger actions to free the men.

By The Canadian Press

Canada’s Global Affairs department has confirmed in a statement that Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor have not gone to trial yet in China.

The statement said that Canadian Embassy officials in Beijing spoke directly with Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials to clarify a media report earlier in the morning that suggested the two Michaels had gone on trial in China.

The statement said that “contrary to what has been reported in the media this morning, there has been no development in the cases of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.”

The statement also said that “the confusion was caused by an inaccurate characterization of the process made by the Chinese MFA spokesperson.”

Kovrig and Spavor are marking two years in separate Chinese prisons, on what Canada and dozens of its Western allies say are trumped-up espionage charges in retaliation for the RCMP’s December 2018 arrest of Chinese high-tech executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant.

They were indicted on June 19.

Canada’s ambassador to China, Dominic Barton, one of the few outsiders to see them, said this week Kovrig and Spavor are anything but broken men, and that seeing how they’ve endured their captivity was inspiring.

Kovrig is “marshalling every ounce of his willpower and strength” to cope with his difficult situation, Nadjibulla said in an interview this week.

“He says that knowing that Canadians care, knowing that the world cares, and people are fighting for his release, makes him feel stronger, and keeps hope alive,” she said, drawing on letters that he has written in captivity.

“He hopes that he will be able to come out from this experience not only having survived it, but with a commitment, with resolve to rebuild his life better, to contribute even more to society.”

Kovrig was most recently an analyst with the International Crisis Group in Washington and before that he was a member of Canada’s diplomatic corps, a career focused on preventing deadly conflicts.

“He hopes that he can continue to do that, and he can rejoin the broader conversation in the world with life and not just continue to be isolated and cut off in the way that he is,” said Kovrig’s wife Vina Nadjibulla.

She said Kovrig is devouring books from the meditations of stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, to Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” to Nelson Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom.” He’s reread one of his pre-prison favourites, “Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, because it contains a key message for him.

“It essentially posits that it’s important to cultivate an ability to not only survive traumas or disruptions but to become better and stronger as a result. So, this idea of building back better. I know it’s very much on the minds of many of us as we recover from the pandemic,” she said.

Kovrig is also drawing on stoic philosophical teaching that, among other things, calls for the transformation of “fear into prudence, pain into information,” said Nadjibulla. Kovrig has added “anger into the termination of grievance” to that philosophy.

He has been drawn to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the sixth book of the New Testament, “which says suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope. And Michael is doing everything possible to keep hope alive,” said Nadjibulla.

Kovrig is subjecting himself to a strict physical regimen, forever on the move in his small cell striving to walk the equivalent of five kilometres daily because he knows his mind cannot thrive if his body is not strong, said Nadjibulla.

Robert Malley, Kovrig’s boss at the International Crisis Group, says his imprisoned colleague can hold the plank, a core body exercise of endurance, for 18 minutes. In solidarity, Crisis Group colleagues recently had a plank competition but the closest anyone got was seven minutes. They’re also walking 7,000 steps a day, the equivalent of five kilometres.

Malley said he and his colleagues are in awe of Kovrig’s discipline.

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