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Six former Canadian
ministers call for release of jailed Chinese dissident in open letter
ROBERT FIFE OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF
OTTAWA
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 15, 2020
UPDATED SAM MIRCOVICH/REUTERS
Six former Canadian justice and foreign affairs
ministers have penned an open letter urging China to immediately release an
ailing Chinese dissident and allow him to return to Canada to live with his
family.
Wang Bingzhang, a human-rights advocate who studied
at McGill University’s faculty of medicine, has been languishing in a Chinese
prison for the past 18 years after Chinese secret police kidnapped him in
Vietnam in 2002 and smuggled him to China, where he was sentenced to life in
prison in solitary confinement.
In the letter to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi,
the six former Canadian ministers say Dr. Wang has suffered three debilitating
strokes and has been denied access to family members who live in Canada.
“He continues to suffer from other chronic diseases,
including high blood pressure and deep vein thrombosis, putting his life at
extreme risk, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic,” they wrote. “Yet he
has consistently been denied access to Canadian family members, most of whom
have been barred from entering China.”
The six – former justice ministers Anne McLellan,
Irwin Cotler and Allan Rock and former foreign affairs ministers Lloyd Aworthy,
Lawrence Cannon and Andre Ouellet – asked for the immediate release of Dr. Wang
“so that his needless and wrongful suffering may end and that he may live out
his remaining days with his family in Canada.”
They also urged Beijing to provide Dr. Wang’s family
with his medical records, so an independent assessment can be made of his care,
and to lift the restrictions that bar his family members from China.
Dr. Wang is a Chinese national, but many of his
immediate family members, including his younger brother, his wife and children,
are Canadian citizens and residents. His sisters live in British Columbia.
The former Canadian politicians say Dr. Wang – the
former leader of the overseas Chinese democracy movement – was illegally
abducted in Vietnam and convicted of trumped-up espionage and terrorism charges
in a sham trial that lasted only half a day.
The six say there is new evidence from witnesses
that their testimony was false.
“At trial, Dr. Wang was denied the opportunity to
speak or present evidence, and no credible evidence or live witness testimony
was presented against him,” they wrote. “Moreover there is now powerful evidence
that the case against Dr. Wang was falsified. At the very least this mass of
compelling exonerating evidence calls for a new trial.”
International organizations such as the United
Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty
International and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights have voiced their
opposition to Dr. Wang’s imprisonment, calling it arbitrary.
Parliament and the U.S. Congress have passed
resolutions calling on China to release Dr. Wang and allow him to return to
Canada.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa did not have an
immediate response to the open letter.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-six-former-canadian-ministers-call-for-release-of-jailed-chinese/
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