China's State Terrorism

The Foreign Billionaires, Activists and Missionaries Detained in China

By Javier C. Hernández

Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat who was detained in Beijing on Monday.
BEIJING — Missionaries. Corporate investigators. Billionaires. Legal activists.

China has a long history of arresting or holding foreigners for mysterious reasons, often in a tit-for-tat play to put pressure on overseas rivals. 

In recent years the number of such detentions has increased, a disturbing trend for foreigners visiting or conducting business in the country.
Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat who was detained in Beijing on Monday, is the latest foreigner to be held by the Chinese in retribution for the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's CFO, in Canada, this month.
Here are some recent cases of foreigners caught in the cross hairs of China’s opaque legal system.

The Missionaries

Julia and Kevin Garratt back in Canada in 2016. The couple were arrested in 2014 by the Chinese authorities on “suspicion of stealing and spying to obtain state secrets.”

Kevin and Julia Garratt, Christian aid workers from Canada, were best known in Dandong, a Chinese city near the border with North Korea, for operating a popular coffee shop. 

They also worked with a charity that provided food to North Koreans. 

But in 2014, they were arrested by the Chinese authorities on “suspicion of stealing and spying to obtain state secrets.”
Ms. Garratt was released on bail and allowed to leave China. 

Mr. Garratt spent two years in prison before his eventual release. 

Both have denied the accusations.
The Chinese have arrested the Garratts in hopes of pressuring Canada into releasing Su Bin, a Chinese spy who was being held in Vancouver, after the United States accused him of stealing military data and sought extradition. 

The Billionaire

The government of China has never specified the reasons for the abduction of Xiao Jianhua, a wealthy and well-connected Chinese-born Canadian citizen.

On a January morning last year, Xiao Jianhua, one of China’s most politically connected financiers, was escorted out of the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong in a wheelchair by unidentified men. 

Xiao had rare insight into the financial holdings of China’s most powerful families, having made his fortune investing in banks, insurers and real estate.
Xiao, a Chinese-born Canadian citizen, is now believed to be in custody in the mainland, helping the authorities with investigations into the finance industry, though the government has not specified the reasons for his abduction.

The Corporate Investigators

Peter Humphrey, left, and his wife, Yu Yingzeng, both corporate investigators, came under scrutiny as part of a Chinese government investigation into fraud and corruption at GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical maker.

Peter Humphrey, a British private investigator, and his wife, Yu Yingzeng, a Chinese-born American citizen, ran a small consulting firm in Shanghai that specialized in “discreet investigations” for multinational companies, focusing on issues like counterfeiting and embezzlement.
But as an investigation by the Chinese government into fraud and corruption at GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical maker, escalated in 2013, Humphrey and Yu, who advised the firm, came under scrutiny as well. 

The couple were arrested and charged with violating the rights of Chinese citizens by obtaining private information. 

Humphrey and Yu served prison sentences of about two years.

The Legal Advocate

Peter Dahlin, the Swedish co-founder of a nongovernmental organization that provided legal aid to Chinese citizens, was forced to apologize on national television and then deported.

Peter Dahlin, a Swedish citizen, was the co-founder of a nongovernmental organization in Beijing that provided legal aid to Chinese citizens. 

His work soon caught the attention of the authorities, who were cracking down on foreign nongovernmental organizations and human rights lawyers.
In early 2016, Mr. Dahlin was detained and interrogated for 23 days by China’s Ministry of State Security. 

He was forced to record a confession and to apologize on national television. 

Then he was deported.

The Fugitive’s Family

Victor and Cynthia Liu, who are American citizens, in an image provided by family friends. They have been held in China for months in what some describe as a bid to lure back their father, Liu Changming, a former bank executive who is among China’s most-wanted fugitives.

Liu Changming, a former executive at a state-owned bank in China, is among China’s most-wanted fugitives.
He is accused of playing a central role in a $1.4 billion fraud case.
He fled the country in 2007.
Now, in what some describe as a bid to lure Liu back, the Chinese government is preventing his wife and children, who are American citizens, from leaving China.
Liu’s wife, Sandra Han, and their children, Victor and Cynthia, arrived in China in June to visit an ailing relative.
Han was detained, and the children have been held for months under a practice known as an exit ban.

Axis of Evil

 Held for Years in China, Canadian Couple Speak Out About Their Detention

By DAN LEVIN

Julia and Kevin Garratt gave their account of their arrest and detention in an interview on Dec. 12, nearly three months after being reunited in Canada. 
MISSISSAUGA, Canada — When the restaurant elevator doors opened onto a crowd of people, many holding video cameras, Kevin and Julia Garratt thought they had stumbled into a wedding party.
But this was no celebration. 

In a flash, the Garratts were snatched by men and shoved into separate cars. 

They would not see each other for more than two years.
On the night of Aug. 4, 2014, the Garratts, Canadian Christian aid workers who lived in the northeastern Chinese city of Dandong, did not know they were in the hands of China’s feared Ministry of State Security. 

The men drove Ms. Garratt, 55, to an office building and demanded that she sign a document stating that she agreed to be investigated.
“Investigated for what?” she asked. 

It was only after a translator said the words “suspect” and “spy” that she understood. 

In another room, her husband was hearing the same chilling accusations.
Scared and bewildered, the Garratts signed. 

“I seriously thought they would realize they’d made a mistake, they’d say sorry and we’d go home,” she said.
The Garratts gave their account of their arrest and detention in an interview on Dec. 12, nearly three months after finally being reunited in Canada.
The Garratts suspect they were unwitting pawns in a gambit by the Chinese government to prevent Canada from extraditing a Chinese spy to the United States. 

The detention of the couple transfixed Canada and proved deeply damaging to the country’s relations with China.
The couple’s account provides a rare glimpse into the workings of China’s opaque state security system. 

Their interrogations may also reveal clues about the vast reach of China’s global espionage network and the lengths to which the Chinese government will go to protect it. 

During the couple’s monthslong detention, for example, they were frequently threatened with execution or told they would be sent to a North Korean gulag.
At a time of Ottawa’s warming relations with Beijing, the Garratts’ experience highlights the risks Canada and other nations face in engaging with China. 

Though they are now back in Canada, the Garratts say they do not feel entirely safe, describing a series of unnerving incidents suggesting that the Chinese government is trying to keep tabs on them and their relatives.
“Even now we live under a cloud,” said Mr. Garratt, 56.
Until their highly publicized detention, the Garratts’ only claim to fame was owning Dandong’s top-rated destination on TripAdvisor: Peter’s Coffee House. 

They lived in China on and off for 30 years, raising their three children there and moving the family from Vancouver to the gritty city on the North Korean border in 2007. 

Mr. Garratt said he had wanted to address the suffering of those living across the border from Dandong by providing aid to orphanages and a school for the disabled in North Korea.
Peter’s Coffee House, named for one of their sons, quickly became a hub for expatriates, local Chinese curious about the outside world — and state security agents suspicious of the Garratts and their customers, who included the occasional American and Canadian diplomat.
Ms. Garratt taught international trade and management at a local university while her husband ran the cafe, organizing weekly “English Corner” language exchanges. 

In their spare time, the couple volunteered around Dandong, often taking Chinese orphans ice skating.
One evening, the Garratts were invited to a restaurant dinner by Chinese acquaintances who told them they wanted advice about how their daughter could apply to the University of Toronto.
But the dinner, along with its aftermath upon emerging from the restaurant’s elevator, was a trap: The set-up had been put in motion by the arrest six weeks earlier in Vancouver, of Su Bin, a Chinese aviation entrepreneur who had been accused by the United States of conspiring with two Chinese soldiers to steal secret United States military data.
The couple were simply chess pieces in a larger geopolitical skirmish. 

“The Chinese made it clear that the Garratt case was designed to pressure Canada to block Su Bin’s extradition to the U.S.,” said James Zimmerman, an American lawyer in Beijing hired by the family to lobby Canadian and Chinese government officials for their release.

Some playing cards, which Julia Garratt made while she was imprisoned, are held by Julia, in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, in December. 

In an emailed statement about the Garratts’ detention, Global Affairs Canada, the department that handles Canada’s diplomatic relations, declined to comment on the question of an exchange, but said, “senior government officials were raising the case at every opportunity.” 

The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa denied that the Garratts’ detention was linked to Mr. Su. 

“We don’t think it is related to any other cases,” an embassy spokesman said in an email.
According to Garratts’ account, after signing the investigation document, Mr. Garratt was driven to the couple’s apartment, where agents ransacked their possessions, grilled him about the contents of the kitchen cabinets and then carted off schoolbooks and computers in the family’s suitcases. 

After a heated exchange, the men allowed Mr. Garratt to take a pair of Bibles back to the detention center.
His wife was already at the compound, an extralegal detention center on the outskirts of the city, confined to a separate isolation cell that had a couch, a bed and a small window covered in opaque plastic. 

During the next six months, they said they never knew the other was there.
But neither was ever alone.
Rotating pairs of guards sat on the couch in each of their cells, staring silently at them and writing down their every move. 

Harsh lights remained on 24 hours a day. 

To stay sane, Ms. Garratt said she prayed, read books provided by the Canadian Consulate and each day, drew a cryptic picture of something she was grateful for in the back of her Bible, afraid anything written would be confiscated.
They each faced daily six-hour interrogations by a team of three men. 

Armed with years of emails, Skype messages and surveillance records, the interrogators accused the Garratts of “hosting” foreign diplomats at their coffee shop, taking orders from Canada’s intelligence agency and stealing state secrets, the couple said.
The agents showed them photos of United States and Canadian diplomats who had visited their coffee shop. 

The interrogators claimed Mr. Garratt’s photos of street scenes in Dandong and views of North Korea across the Yalu River were espionage, even though tourists on riverboat trips took the same photos every day.
Ms. Garratt was forced to write confessions detailing her every conversation with embassy officials, a difficult task considering she had spoken to many foreign customers and did not know who they were. 

They also made her list the names, relationships and phone numbers of people in China and Canada she had emailed, going back more than a decade. 

“When they pushed really hard, they’d threaten to take my son,” she said, referring to Peter, who was studying at a university in China at the time.
Security officers used a variety of coercion tactics. 

“They threatened execution many times,” Mr. Garratt said with a shudder. 

In one exchange, the interrogators described a 2009 meeting in Vancouver between the couple and an agent from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, who had wanted to ensure their volunteer work in North Korea was not violating United Nations sanctions. 

When Ms. Garratt asked how the interrogators knew about the meeting, one of them said “we have people in the U.S., Canada, everywhere.”
Canadian officials declined to discuss the Garratts’ treatment, but the couples’ account squares with those of many people who have been in Chinese detention.
Their isolation ended as suddenly as it began. 

In February 2015, Ms. Garratt was released on bail and returned to their apartment. 

In the meantime, her husband was charged with espionage and transferred to a prison medical ward.
During the 19 months he spent there, a rumor circulated among the guards that he would be released as part of a prisoner exchange.
But in February, Mr. Su waived his challenge to extradition and cut a deal with the United States. Once that happened, “Beijing was stuck with a weak case of espionage against the Garratts and little bargaining leverage to get much of anything out of Ottawa,” said Mr. Zimmerman, the American lawyer.
In August, just days before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada arrived in China for a G-20 summit meeting, Ms. Garratt was allowed to leave the country. 

Two weeks later, Mr. Garratt was taken to court, where a judge read out an eight-page guilty verdict in Chinese; the next morning, he was put on a plane bound for Tokyo, but only after agreeing to pay more than $14,000 in fines and signing a document promising not to speak with the news media about his detention. 

Much of that money, he said, had been dedicated to a North Korean orphanage.
Mr. Trudeau called while Mr. Garratt was en route to Vancouver, where the family tearfully reunited. Just days later, China and Canada agreed to discuss a landmark free trade deal and an extradition treaty. 

The government has denied that it made any concessions to China for Mr. Garratt’s release.
Yet the Garratts do not feel entirely free. 

In recent months, relatives have encountered strange interference on their phones, computers have gone haywire and strange cars parked outside their homes drive away when someone approaches.
Most of all, the Garratts feel grief at losing the lives they built over 30 years. 

“That’s the sadness that overwhelms us,” Mr. Garratt said. 

“We were just trying to help people in need. That’s all we did.”