China has provoked international outrage after it ‘inhumanely’ executed four Canadian nationals accused of drug-smuggling, with mass killings by Beijing’s firing squads furiously condemned by campaigners and officials.
Canada’s foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly said she and former prime minister Justin Trudeau had asked for clemency for the dual citizens after they were implicated in the alleged crimes.
But Beijing’s embassy in Ottawa said the executions were due to drug crimes and noted that China does not recognise dual citizenship.
Amnesty International condemned the executions as inhumane and noted that China executed thousands of people in 2023, according to its most recent figures.
‘These shocking and inhumane executions of Canadian citizens by Chinese authorities should be a wake-up call for Canada,’ the group’s head for English-speaking Canada, Ketty Nivyabandi, said in a statement.
China is believed to execute more prisoners each year than the rest of the world combined, with the total number a closely-guarded state secret.
Executions are traditionally carried out by gunshot, although lethal injections have been introduced in recent years.
Speaking to reporters in Ottawa, Ms Joly said the Canadian government ‘strongly condemned’ the latest killings.
China is believed to execute more prisoners each year than the rest of the world combined. Pictured: Archive image shows Chinese police presenting a group of convicts for sentencing, many of whom went on to be executed
Canada’s foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly said she and former prime minister Justin Trudeau had asked for clemency for the dual citizens
‘I asked personally for leniency… They were all dual citizens,’ she said, adding that Canada consistently asks for clemency for its citizens facing the death penalty abroad.
She said the families had asked the government to withhold details of the identity of the four individuals.
Global Affairs spokeswoman Charlotte MacLeod said they continued to provide consular assistance to families and requested that the media respect their privacy.
She said Ottawa continued to advocate for clemency for Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian who was sentenced to death for drug smuggling, who was not included in the latest executions.
‘China always imposes severe penalties on drug-related crimes,’ a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy said.
‘The facts of the crimes committed by the Canadian nationals involved in the cases are clear, and the evidence is solid and sufficient.’
The embassy spokesperson said Beijing ‘fully guaranteed the rights and interests of the Canadian nationals concerned’, and urged Canada’s government to ‘stop making irresponsible remarks’.
There have been mounting tensions between the two countries in recent years.
China imposed retaliatory tariffs on some Canadian farm and food imports earlier this month, after Canada imposed duties in October on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EV) and steel and aluminium products.
The tariffs add to global trade tensions amid rounds of tariff announcements by the United States, China, Canada and Mexico.
This handout photograph taken and released by the Intermediate Peoples’ Court of Dalian on January 14, 2019 shows Canadian Robert Lloyd Schellenberg. uring his retrial on drug trafficking charges in the court in Dalian in China’s northeast Liaoning province. Canada confirmed he was not among the Canadians killed in the latest executions
Chinese police lead a condemned man into a special execution van (file image)
Chinese President Xi Jinping pictured earlier this week
‘China is sending us a message that we have to take steps if we want to see an improvement in the relationship,’ said a former Canadian ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques.
Ian Brodie, a former chief of staff to ex-Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, posted on social media that it turns out ‘agricultural tariffs weren’t the worst part of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) response to EV tariffs’.
And opposition Conservative politician Michael Chong said ‘executing a number of Canadians in short order is unprecedented, and is clearly a sign that Beijing has no intention of improving relations with Canada’.
China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, but relations have been bad since Canadian authorities arrested a former Huawei executive in 2018 who the US had charged with fraud.
China jailed two Canadians shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the company’s founder, on a US extradition request.
They were sent back to Canada in 2021, the same day Ms Meng returned to China after reaching a deal with US authorities in her case.
Many countries called China’s action ‘hostage politics’, while China described the charges against Huawei and Ms Meng as a politically motivated attempt to hold back China’s economic and technological development.
While the communist does not release its official figures, rights groups believe many thousands of people in China are executed each year – more than the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US, even when tallied together.
Criminal law in the country is as severe as it is obfuscated, with many crimes punishable by death under Beijing’s draconian legislation.
Death sentences are frequently handed down for crimes ranging from drug trafficking to murder, but also white collar crimes such as corruption.
According to a report published in 2021, China’s Penal Code of 1997 – which is still in force today – has 46 crimes punishable by death, including 24 violent crimes and 22 non-violent crimes.
While the number of such crimes has slowly reduced (in 1979 it was 74, according to the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty), executions remain widespread, creating what Amnesty International calls a ‘conveyor belt of executions’.
In 2022, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty said that at least 8,000 people per year were executed in China from 2007.
