Once again clearly breaching its obligations under a consular relations treaty,
China has refused to allow Australian diplomatic representatives to attend the trial of Yang Hengjun, an Australian national, in China. (Excuse the tardy post; this happened on May 27th but I've had other things to do.) Fortunately, the Chinese government has spared me the task of explaining why this is a breach, since they already gave me
the opportunity to do so back in 2010 with the trial of Stern Hu, another Australian national — please check out that blog post for the reasoning.
The government is not just picking on Australia, however; as
I discussed last March,
it also breached the same obligation in the trials of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, the Canada-China consular relations agreement being the same as the Australia-China agreement in all relevant respects.
It's important to recognize that the obligations in question don't involve matters of subjective judgment or degree; China promises to allow access to trials, with no exceptions. And the agreements even go on to specify that neither party may cite its own law as a reason to deny the right of access. This, of course, is exactly what China has been doing, claiming a national security excuse. It is hard to imagine a clearer breach of a promise. A lot of people assert that China won't break this or that proposed promise because it would fear the reputational damage that would ensure; nobody would trust Chinese government promises in the future. And yet here we are.
Comment: As
reported by F. William Engdahl Michael Kovrig had a rather suspect background, and was officially listed as "North East Asia adviser" for an outfit
called the International Crisis Group:
The International Crisis Group is an NGO with a knack for being involved in key conflict zones such as Myanmar. The magazine Third World Quarterly in a peer-reviewed article in 2014 accused the ICG of "manufacturing" crises.
So it would appear that, in Kovrig and Spavor's case, there's reason to believe China's claims of National Security
concerns.
As for Yang Hengjun, Australia's own ABC
describes him as 'a spy and a democracy peddler'.
See also:
Comment: As reported by F. William Engdahl Michael Kovrig had a rather suspect background, and was officially listed as "North East Asia adviser" for an outfit called the International Crisis Group: So it would appear that, in Kovrig and Spavor's case, there's reason to believe China's claims of National Security concerns.
As for Yang Hengjun, Australia's own ABC describes him as 'a spy and a democracy peddler'.
See also: