Toronto – China executed four Canadians in recent months, said Canada Foreign Minister on Wednesday. Such western executions are relatively rare.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, said that she and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau requested clemency in drug -related accusations that involved dual citizens.
The Beijing Embassy in Ottawa said the executions were due to drug crimes and pointed out that China does not recognize the double citizenship.
“We firmly condemn the executions,” Joly told journalists in Ottawa. “I asked him personally clemency … They were all dual citizens.”
Joly said Canada constantly requests clemency for Canadians who face the death penalty abroad. She said that families have asked the government to retain details of the identities of the four people.
The spokeswoman for global affairs, Charlotte Macleod, said that the Government continues to provide consular assistance to families and requested that the media respect their privacy. She said that Ottawa continues to advocate for clemency by Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian who was sentenced to death for drug smuggling.
“China always imposes severe sanctions on drug -related crimes,” said a spokesman for the Chinese embassy. “The facts of the crimes committed by Canadian citizens involved in cases are clear, and the evidence is solid and sufficient.”
It is believed that China executes more prisoners every year than the rest of the combined world, although the total is a state secret. Executions are traditionally carried out by shots, although lethal injections have been introduced in recent years.
The embassy spokesman said that Beijing “completely guaranteed the rights and interests of the Canadian citizens in question,” and urged the Canada government to “stop making irresponsible comments.”
The two countries have some tensions. China imposed reprisal rates for some Canadian imports of farms and food earlier this month, after Canada imposed tariffs in October in electric vehicles made by Chinese and steel and aluminum products. Tariffs add up to world commercial tensions in the midst of tariff advertisement rounds by the United States, China, Canada and Mexico.
“China is sending us a message that we have to take measures if we want to see an improvement in the relationship,” said a former Canadian ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques.
Ian Brodie, former head of the former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, published on social networks that “agricultural tariffs were not the worst part of the RPC’s response to EV tariffs.”
And the opposition conservative legislator, Michael Chong, said that “executing several Canadians in a short time is not precedents, and is clearly a sign that Beijing has no intention of improving relations with Canada.”
China is the second largest commercial partner in Canada, but relations have been bad since the Canadian authorities in 2018 arrested a former Huawei executive whom the United States had accused fraud.
China imprisoned two Canadians shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the company’s founder, in an extradition request from the United States. They were sent back to Canada in 2021, the same day that Meng returned to China after reaching an agreement with the US authorities in his case.
Many countries called China “Hostage Policy”, while China described the positions against Huawei and Meng as an attempt to political motivation to stop China’s economic and technological development.
Amnesty International condemned the executions and said that China executed thousands of people in 2023.
“These shocking and inhuman executions of Canadian citizens by Chinese authorities should be a attention call for Canada,” said English -speaking Canada group, Ketty Nivyabandi, in a statement on Wednesday.
