The Foreign Minister of Canada, Mélanie Joly, announced that China had executed four Canadian citizens in recent weeks, despite Ottawa’s appeals for clemency.
“We strongly condemn the executions that did happen against Canadians in China,” Joly told reporters in Ottawa. However, she declined to disclose details of the cases, citing privacy requests from the affected families.
The Chinese embassy defended the executions in a statement to The Globe and Mail, asserting that the individuals had been convicted of drug-related crimes.
“Drug-related crime is a severe crime recognized worldwide as extremely harmful to society,” the embassy statement read. “China always imposes severe penalties on drug-related crimes and maintains a ‘zero tolerance’ attitude towards the drug problem.”
Joly confirmed that both she and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who left office last week, had personally requested leniency for the Canadians, to no avail.
China keeps its execution figures classified as a state secret, but human rights organisations like Amnesty International estimate that thousands are put to death in the country each year.
The latest executions are likely to further strain relations between Beijing and Ottawa, which have been rocky in recent years.
Tensions escalated in 2018 after Canada arrested a senior Chinese telecom executive on a U.S. warrant, prompting Beijing to detain two Canadians on espionage charges in retaliation. Accusations of Chinese interference in Canadian elections in 2019 and 2021, which Beijing denies, also deepened the rift.
In 2023, Joly expelled a Chinese diplomat accused of targeting a Canadian opposition lawmaker critical of Beijing. Canada has also condemned China’s crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and its treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority.
