Canadian held by China says he suffered psychological torture By Reuters

OTTAWA (Reuters) – A Canadian man held by China for more than 1,000 days says he has been held in solitary confinement for months and interrogated for up to nine hours a day in treatment he says amounts to psychological torture.

Michael Kovrig said in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp that he missed his daughter’s birth and did not meet her for the first time until she was two and a half years old.

Kovrig and his Canadian colleague Michael Spavor were arrested in December 2018, shortly after Canadian police detained Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecom giant Huawei, on a U.S. warrant. Both men were accused of espionage.

“I still carry a lot of pain with me and it can be hard at times,” Kovrig said in his first substantive comments since he and Spavor were released in September 2021.

Kovrig noted that UN guidelines state that prisoners should not be held in solitary confinement for more than 15 days at a time.

“More than that is considered psychological torture. I was there for almost six months,” said Kovrig, a former diplomat who was working as an adviser for a think tank when he was arrested.

Kovrig said there was no daylight in the solitary confinement cell, where fluorescent lights were left on 24 hours a day. At one point, his food rations were reduced to three bowls of rice a day.

“It was absolutely the most psychologically draining and painful thing I’ve ever experienced,” he said.

“It’s a combination of solitary confinement, total isolation and relentless interrogation for six to nine hours a day,” he said. “They try to bully you, torment you, terrorize you and coerce you … into accepting their false version of reality.”

Kovrig and Spavor were released on the same day the U.S. Justice Department withdrew its extradition request for Meng and she returned to China.

Bilateral ties are chilly. China this month opened a year-long anti-dumping investigation into imports of rapeseed from Canada, just weeks after Ottawa announced 100% tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles.

Kovrig’s partner was six months pregnant when he was arrested. She played recordings of his voice to their daughter and showed photos of her father so she would recognize him when they finally met.

“I will never forget that feeling of wonder, that everything was new and beautiful again and I was pushing my daughter on a swing and she said to her mother, ‘Mommy, I’m so happy,’” he said.

The Chinese embassy in Ottawa was not immediately available for comment.