Michael Kovrig, former hostage of the Chinese state
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. THE GOGGLES were bothersome. They fogged up when worn with glasses, rendering the world fuzzy when Michael Kovrig wanted to send his accusers the clearest possible message.
It was late March 2021. After more than two years locked up in the Beijing State Security Detention Centre the Canadian former diplomat had been placed in handcuffs and leg irons and driven to a windowless courtroom for a one-day trial, charged with procuring state secrets. The sensation of being shackled was familiar.
China’s security machine had worked to break Mr Kovrig’s spirit from the moment he was snatched from a Beijing street by black-clad agents in December 2018. Each time that his captors moved him around his detention centre in Fengtai, a southern suburb of the capital, he was blindfolded, manacled and strapped into a wheelchair. But on this day of his trial China’s “zero covid" controls added an extra twist of horror.
The lanky Canadian, muscles toned by months of yoga, press-ups and planks in his cell, was ordered to don a stifling white hazmat suit, booties, face-mask, gloves and plastic goggles, before entering the courtroom. Though pinioned and half-blinded, Mr Kovrig stuck to his plan of resistance. He had a 20-page statement to deliver to a panel of three impassive judges, drafted over weeks and translated by his own hand into Chinese.
The judges, a trio of scowling prosecutors, Mr Kovrig’s two Chinese lawyers and an interpreter were his audience. Canadian diplomats should have been allowed to attend the hearing, according to a consular agreement. But China declared the trial too sensitive for foreigners to attend, obliging Canadian and other foreign envoys to wait on the street outside.
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