FILE PHOTO: A man holds a sign calling for China to release Wang Bingzhang and former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig, who was detained in China on Monday night, at the B.C. Supreme Court bail hearing of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada December 11, 2018. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson
December 19, 2018
BEIJING (Reuters) – A third Canadian has been detained in China but the incident does not appear to be linked to the arrest of two other citizens over the last week, a Canadian government official in Ottawa said on Wednesday.
The official said Canadian authorities were aware of the detention but gave no details.
“There is no reason to believe that this case is linked to the recent cases of Canadians detained in China,” said the official, who spoke on the grounds they not be identified.
Two Canadians – former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor – were detained last week by China amid a diplomatic row between the two nations, triggered by Canada’s arrest of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd’s [HWT.UL] chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou.
Although the Canadian government has said several times it saw no explicit link between Meng’s arrest and the detentions of Kovrig and Spavor, Beijing-based Western diplomats and former Canadian diplomats have said they believed the detentions were a form of “tit-for-tat” reprisal by China.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard, Philip Wen and Christian Shepherd in Beijing, Allison Martell in Toronto and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Robert Birsel and Bernadette Baum)
