Swedish Quisling

Sweden Charges Ex-Ambassador to China Over Secret Meetings
The diplomat, Anna Lindstedt, arranged unauthorized talks between the daughter of a detained bookseller and two men representing Chinese interests.
By Iliana Magra and Chris Buckley

Sweden’s former ambassador to China has been charged with “arbitrariness during negotiations with a foreign power,” after she held what Swedish prosecutors said on Monday were unauthorized meetings with two men representing Chinese state interests.
The announcement of the charges was the latest twist in a four-year-old case, in which a Swedish citizen was spirited to China from Thailand, the ambassador held what the authorities say were secret meetings in a Stockholm hotel, and ties between China and Sweden have been strained.
The former ambassador, Anna Lindstedt, was accused earlier this year of arranging the talks between Angela Gui, the daughter of Gui Minhai, a Swedish bookseller detained in China, and two Chinese men who had offered to help free Mr. Gui in January.

Instead of talks about freeing her father, Ms. Gui was pressured to keep silent.
After the talks at a Stockholm hotel, Ms. Gui accused Lindstedt, the ambassador at the time, of arranging the talks without authorization from the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. 

The ministry opened an internal investigation into Lindstedt in mid-February.

Swedish Quisling Anna Lindstedt

“In this specific consular matter, she has exceeded her mandate and has therefore rendered herself criminally liable,” Hans Ihrman, the deputy chief public prosecutor for Sweden’s National Security Unit, said in a statement on Monday. 

Mr. Ihrman said the charge of arbitrariness during negotiations with a foreign power was “unprecedented.”
“We have looked way back to find any kind of indictment for this, but in modern times we have no trail of an investigation,” he said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Ihrman described the meeting as an attempt by Chinese officials to stop Ms. Gui’s criticism of the Chinese government because of the treatment of her father.
“It’s about this daughter’s right to freedom of speech, which they have tried to act upon,” he said.
Nevertheless, he said, Lindstedt acted on her own without the necessary support or permission from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
The charge can bring a maximum prison sentence of two years under the Swedish Penal Code. 

A trial date for Lindstedt has not been set, Mr. Ihrman said. 

The Swedish public broadcaster SVT reported Monday that prosecutors chose a milder charge than what the government’s security service had sought, “disloyalty when negotiating with a foreign power,” which carries up to a 10-year sentence.

Mr. Gui was one of five Hong Kong-based publishers who were abducted and taken to China in 2015 after publishing books that were critical of the Communist Party elite, setting off international condemnation.
After being taken from Thailand to China in 2015, he was formally released two years later but was not allowed to leave the country.
Mr. Gui was again detained early last year, when two Swedish diplomats tried to accompany him on a train from Shanghai to Beijing, where they planned to take him into the Swedish Embassy. 

But Chinese police officers boarded the train and took him into custody.
They said later that Mr. Gui was suspected of illegally providing state secrets, but gave no details or evidence. 

Soon after, the Chinese authorities brought Mr. Gui before a group of reporters, and he told them that the Swedish diplomats had wanted to spirit him back to Sweden.
Mr. Ihrman, the Swedish prosecutor, said on Monday that Mr. Gui was in a Chinese prison.
Relations between Sweden and China have been strained since Gui Minhai was kidnapped in 2015, and tensions increased last month when the Swedish office of the writers’ group PEN said that it was awarding a literary prize to Mr. Gui. 

The prize is given annually to an author or publisher who is persecuted, threatened or living in exile.
Three days later, the Chinese Embassy in Stockholm called the prize a “farce” and threatened consequences if members of the Swedish government were to attend the award ceremony.
A week later, Amanda Lind, Sweden’s minister of culture, not only attended the ceremony but also awarded the prize, despite warnings from the Chinese ambassador that Ms. Lind and other government officials working in the area of culture would no longer be welcome in China.
Late last month, China appeared to follow through on its warning, with SVT reporting that two Swedish films had been banned from screenings in China.
Last week, after a seminar in Gothenburg, Sweden, on Swedish-Chinese relations, the Chinese ambassador to Sweden, Gui Congyou, told the newspaper Goteborgs-Posten that China would limit trade with Sweden because of its handling of the Gui Minhai case.

Jesper Bengtsson, the chairman of Swedish PEN, said the organization was surprised by the “amazingly” strong response from China to this year’s award.

“Governments and regimes have often reacted but never with threats, and threatening to block ministers from visiting China, Mr. Bengtsson said in a telephone interview, adding that the Swedish culture minister always attends the award ceremony.
Previous prize recipients include Nasrin Sotoudeh, the Iranian human rights lawyer who is serving a 38-year prison sentence after being convicted of crimes against national security, and Dawit Isaak, a Swedish-Eritrean journalist who was arrested in Eritrea in 2001 on security charges and has been imprisoned without a trial ever since.

Sweden Recalls Ambassador to China in Twist in Bookseller’s Detention

Ambassador arranged meeting where Chinese demanded media silence in exchange for Gui Minhai’s release
By Eva Dou
Anna Lindstedt, Sweden’s ambassador to China, is the second Western ambassador to China recalled in a month.

BEIJING—Sweden has recalled its ambassador to China and opened an internal investigation into her role in arranging a meeting where Chinese businessmen threatened the daughter of a detained Swedish bookseller, Sweden’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday.
Anna Lindstedt is the second Western ambassador to China recalled in a month, stoking concerns about China’s potential growing leverage over foreign diplomats.
It was also another bizarre twist in the case of the bookseller Gui Minhai—whose detention has drawn widespread attention from Western governments, angering Beijing. 

Mr. Gui is a Chinese-born Swedish citizen and had been based in Hong Kong, where he specialized in selling political titles banned in mainland China. 

He first disappeared from his Thailand home in 2015 into Chinese custody, then was snatched again by Chinese agents last year while on a train with Swedish diplomats. 

He remains in custody, facing unspecified state-secret charges.
Mr. Gui’s daughter, Angela Gui, alleged on Wednesday in a widely circulated essay on the website Medium that Ms. Lindstedt had contacted her in mid-January, inviting her to meet some Chinese businessmen in Stockholm who offered to help with Mr. Gui’s case. 

The meetings turned strange, with the men requesting she not leave the hotel during the day, plying her with wine and asking her to go work with them in China.

Angela Gui, whose father is in Chinese custody facing unspecified state-secret charges. 

The men demanded she stop making public statements, in exchange for her father’s release with a reduced penalty. 

Ms. Lindstedt attended the meetings and agreed with the plan, Ms. Gui wrote.
“I was taken aback and said I didn’t trust him,” she wrote of one of the unnamed businessmen. 

“He then said, ‘You have to trust me, or you will never see your father again.’ ”
Ms. Lindstedt told her China might punish Sweden if she continued her activism and that officials at Sweden’s Foreign Ministry were unaware that Ms. Lindstedt had arranged the meeting.
An email to Ms. Lindstedt’s email address returned an auto reply: “I have finished my mission in Beijing to move back to Sweden.”
Ms. Gui didn’t respond to emails from the Journal on Thursday.
Rasmus Eljanskog, a press officer for Sweden’s Foreign Ministry, said in an emailed statement that an internal investigation has been initiated “due to information concerning incorrect action in connection with events at the end of January.” 

He declined to comment on details of the allegations.
Sweden takes cases involving restrictions on freedom of expression seriously, Mr. Eljanskog said.
Karl-Olof Andersson, deputy head of the Swedish Embassy in Beijing, said by telephone that he is acting head of the mission and referred further questions to Stockholm.
The case came weeks after Canada’s ambassador to China was fired for saying a senior Huawei Technologies Co. executive arrested at U.S. request had a good case to fight extradition.

Canada’s Ambassador to China Pushed Out Over Stupid Huawei Comments

By Dan Bilefsky

The Canadian ambassador to China, John McCallum, in Sherbrooke, Quebec, earlier this month. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the ambassador’s resignation on Saturday.

MONTREAL — Canada’s ambassador to China has resigned following a series of diplomatic missteps that further complicated strained relations between the two countries.
The resignation came days after the ambassador, John McCallum, stunned seasoned diplomatic observers by saying that Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of the Chinese telecom firm Huawei who was arrested in December by Canadian authorities in Vancouver at the United States request, stood a good chance of avoiding extradition to the United States.
His public assessment of the sensitive and high profile case came under sharp criticism, including from the leader of the opposition conservative party Andrew Scheer, who said McCallum’s comments threatened to politicize the case and called for him to be fired.
“Last night, I asked for and accepted John McCallum’s resignation as Canada’s ambassador to China,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday.
McCallum backpedaled on Thursday, saying that he misspoke. 

But a day later, following a news report quoting him saying that it would be “great for Canada” if the United States dropped its request to extradite the Huawei executive, he was once again under fire.
Canada is in the middle of a struggle between China and the United States, two countries engaged in a protracted trade war.
Canada has vowed not to intervene politically in the Huawei case, which is currently pending in Canadian courts, making McCallum’s comments all the more awkward. 

China has characterized Meng’s arrest as an abuse of power by Canadian authorities.
The United States is expected to formally request the extradition of Meng from Canada in the coming days. 

It has until Jan. 30 to make the request. 

Once made, Canadian courts will decide whether she can be sent to the United States, with a final determination made by Canada’s minister of justice.
Canada has also been trying to help three of its own citizens held in China, including Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat who was working for a research organization, and Michael Spavor, a businessman, who have been detained on suspicion of “endangering national security.” 

The third Canadian, Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, 36, was sentenced to death this month in China for drug smuggling.
McCallum is known to speak his mind. 

A former academic, he has held a series of senior positions in Liberal governments including as minister of defense and as Trudeau’s minister of immigration. 

He played a leading role in Canada’s decision to welcome thousands of Syrian refugees to the country.

Chinese State Hooliganism

Feud with Canada is damaging China’s reputation in the world

By Josh Wingrove and Greg Quinn

Canada's ambassador to China John McCallum told reporters Wednesday that China's prosecutions of Canadian nationals risked undermining their own interests among the world's business community.
Canada’s ambassador to China warned that the spiralling diplomatic feud between the nations was damaging Beijing’s reputation, as the U.S. joined countries criticizing a Canadian citizen’s death sentence as “politically motivated.”
Ambassador John McCallum told reporters Wednesday that China’s prosecutions of Canadian nationals risked undermining their own interests among the world’s business community. 

McCallum, a former lawmaker, said he believed that argument would prove more compelling to Chinese officials than seeking support from business and foreign governments to pressure Beijing.
“We have to engage the senior Chinese leaders and persuade them that what they are doing is not good for China’s place in the world,” McCallum said, attending a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet in Sherbrooke, Quebec. 

“It’s not good for the image of corporate China in the world.”
Canada is navigating what Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland described Wednesday as a “difficult moment” with China, six weeks after the Vancouver arrest of Huawei Technologies Co. Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou. 

China has since detained two Canadians over alleged national security threats, moved to execute another for drug-smuggling and mocked Trudeau in daily news briefings.
Trudeau’s government has warned Canadians to exercise caution in the country “due to the risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws” and sought support from leaders of nations including Argentina, Germany and New Zealand. 

Following a phone call between Freeland and U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, the State Department issued a statement criticizing the “politically motivated sentencing of Canadian nationals.”
Freeland said Canada was arguing that China represents a “way of behaving which is a threat to all countries.” 

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has come under increasing criticism in the West over a human rights record that includes crackdowns on human rights lawyers and the mass detention of Uighur Muslims.

The feud between Beijing and Ottawa stems from the Dec. 1 arrest of Meng as part of a U.S.-led effort to extradite her over sanctions violations. 

The U.S. and its allies have taken a series of steps in recent weeks to bar the Chinese telecommunications giant from sensitive networks over spying fears, including a probe into suspected trade-secrets theft by federal prosecutors in Seattle.
China has denounced the effort as unjustified and demanded Meng’s immediate release. 

Days after her arrest, China’s spy agency detained Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor on suspicion of “activities endangering national security,” although authorities have provided no evidence and deflected questions about whether the actions were taken in retaliation for Meng.

STILL HELD
Meng is free on bail pending her next court hearing. 

But Kovrig, who was on leave from his foreign service posting in Hong Kong, and Spavor, an entrepreneur who ran tours into North Korea, remain in custody. 

A third Canadian, Robert Schellenberg, had his earlier 15-year sentence for drug smuggling increased to execution during a retrial Monday in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian.
“My first priority by far is to do everything in my capacity to secure the release of the two Michaels as quickly as possible, and to help to save the life of Mr. Schellenberg,” McCallum said earlier Wednesday.
McCallum said Kovrig and Spavor are each being questioned up to four hours per day and that he has visited both, along with Schellenberg. 

He cautioned that efforts to build international pressure for their release were unlikely to be effective unless Beijing believed it would benefit from doing so.
“There are many fronts we are working on, but one of the main ones is to persuade China, not necessarily through Canadians, but through corporate and government leaders around their world, that this behavior is not in their interest,” McCallum said. 

“We have a lot of work yet to do.”