Front Burner - One woman’s fight to free her husband from a Chinese jail

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

In an exclusive interview with the National’s Adrienne Arsenault, Michael Kovrig’s wife is speaking out for the first time. Vina Nadjibulla says Ottawa could do more to get her husband - and Canadian Michael Spavor - out of jail in China. Both men were arrested in December of 2018 - just days after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was detained in Vancouver on behalf of American justice officials. Today on Front Burner, Adrienne Arsenault brings us more on Nadjibulla’s fight for her husband’s freedom - and how she is helping him stay resilient.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. It's been 564 days that Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor have been detained in China. The two men were arrested in 2018, just days after Canada arrested Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on an extradition request from the U.S.

Reports have emerged about their ordeal in prison, including hours-long interrogations and solitary confinement. During his time in prison, Michael Kovrig was allowed one phone call to his loved ones. So letters to his family have become a lifeline for both sides. If there's one faint silver lining to this hell,

it's this. Trauma carved caverns of psychological pain through my mind. As I strive to heal and recover, I find myself filling those gulfs with a love for you and for life that is vast, deep, and more profound and comforting than what I've ever experienced before. So as I sit here, tinnitus ringing in the silence, as I walk in circles, pollution clogging

my nose, come sit with me and walk with me in spirit. Help me feel less isolated. Let me share the love I have for you, and we'll get through this together. Love, Michael. The voice you hear is Veena Najibullah, Michael Kovrig's wife. Veena spoke out for the first time since the arrest, in an interview with The National's Adrian Arsenault. She shared what life has been like for Kovrig in a Chinese prison and how she thinks Ottawa can do more to secure the release of her husband and Michael Spavor.

Adrian joins us on today's episode for more from that conversation. I'm Josh Bloch, and this is FrontBurner. Adrian, thanks so much for joining us. Not at all. So Adrienne, since your interview with Veena aired, she actually received another letter from Michael after months of no communication. And I want to ask you about that in a moment. But first, we know that Michael's family hasn't spoken publicly since his arrest.

What made his wife want to come forward now? Well, I think Veena has held it together that the whole family have been quiet, you know, specifically Bennett Kovrig, Michael's father, his sister Arianna. I think the fear has always been there that somehow someone might be punished if they spoke out. You know, maybe it will be Michael. Maybe they say something wrong. You know, they have this objective to do no harm. Maybe they'd be punished in that, you know, maybe the government would cut off sharing information.

They have been gripped by that sort of fear for 562, 663 days at this point. So, to put it bluntly, we kept our mouths shut in the public for a year and a half, always being told, you being told and reminded, yes, but this is a good way to secure his liberation. But increasingly they've been getting to this place where they realize, hey, if we aren't speaking, is anyone actually thinking of them? And yes, of course there's work going on in the background, but are Canadians really understanding what's happening and the agony here?

And is anyone putting any pressure on the government? And Michael's father is interesting, and he's angry. So I think that we have reached the end of the road in playing the be quiet and everything will be all right game. I think that Canada must not be seen by Canadians, in the first place, to have betrayed him. It also gets to a point where rhetoric can only get us so far. I'm scared I'm never going to see my brother again.

And I don't know why those in power are so scared of doing the right thing. And so Veena and I have been talking really for several months at this point about whether she wanted to talk. And she has, but she's always said, you know, hang on, maybe the court will rule in Meng Wanzhou's favor. Maybe the Chinese will release him. Maybe they won't lay charges. Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor have been held captive for a year and a half. China has now formally charged the two men with espionage. In the Chinese system,

a conviction is nearly guaranteed. And officials won't say if the men might face life sentences or even death. The family just decided, you know what, enough, enough. It's time people heard from us. And as you mentioned, they were doing work in the background. And certainly Veena has been doing a lot of work in the background and really taken on this fight to bring her husband and Michael Spavor back. Tell me a little bit about Veena and the work she's been doing. Well, I mean, firstly, this is the woman you want in your lifeboat, Josh, like you really, you really want Veena on your side. My goal and the goal of everybody who cares about Michael is to secure his freedom. We need to do that by engaging in a way that is smart, that is strategic, that is strong, but not to just be angry or confrontational for its own sake.

We've got to figure out how to end this, not to escalate it. Here's someone who was born in the Soviet Union. She was raised in Afghanistan. She spent, you know, I guess, 15, 16 years now working with civil society groups, with NGOs, with the UN. She speaks Mandarin, Russian, Farsi. She spent time in war zones. She and Michael got together at Columbia in 2002, became best friends. He proposed to her at the UN. She sort of jokes that it was... It was a UN proposal, a Canadian UN proposal. That was in 2006.

They married. Eventually they separated, and I suppose they stopped being linked romantically before he was detained. But they're still legally married, and I think you don't have to spend much time with her to realize there's still love there. We've known each other for 20 years.

We were classmates, friends. I am his person like he's my person. We have each other's back. And he is in a fight for his life. And it seems that from the moment her phone rang in December of 2018 from friends to say Michael had been taken, she dropped everything. And I spent a lot of time in war zones because of my work. He would always say, no matter where you are, if something bad happens, I will be there and I'll get you out.

I have your back. And I would say the same to him, and never did I think that this would happen. never did I think that this would happen. She says she grabbed a notebook and a pen in those first few days and then started to fill out this book with phone numbers and transcripts of conversations and to-do lists of who to contact. And I think if she's honest with herself, she really didn't think it would be for a very long time. But when we finally sat down on Monday to talk, so she opened this knapsack and book after book after book just basically spill out of it. And in an instant you see, you know, the effort that's gone into this. Everything else in her life is on pause. She is the liaison for the Kovrig family. She's fighting for the Spavvers.

She is literally spending every day banging down one door or another to get something done. Well, since their arrest in 2018, we've heard some reports about how the two Michaels have been coping in prison. Well, I'm curious to know what Veena told you about her husband's condition and how he's doing. He had a consular visit was January 14th. That's the last time anyone saw him because of the pandemic. And I mean, imagine when he learned of that, he must have thought that was a terrible trick. Oh, sure. No one can come see me because of a virus. It must have seemed impossible. You know, Veena has since sort of in letters had to explain to him that it's true. He said that it was incredible to hear us talk about this pandemic,

that somehow it almost sounded like the movie Contagion. So there have been worries about how the pandemic has affected his health. She knows that for the first six months, he was in solitary confinement, interrogated for several hours a day. He's been in one cell. In one of his letters, he says that it really weighs on the soul when you can't see more than 10 feet in any direction. He has had some cellmates recently, though, and he could get letters at a regular sort of monthly

interval. You know, he really doesn't know when he'd be, when he's able to write back. So Veena thinks what's happening is that he's composing letters in his mind and kind of memorizing them. And then in that flash, when pen and paper sort of arrive, he just gets them down fast. And when you see them, you know, like they're lyrical, they're loving. Greetings from my concrete desert of the real. Since last time, the days have passed with gray, grinding monotony. Please don't take that or anything else I've said as complaining. I don't believe in that. But I do yearn for those outside to understand the experience a bit. I find what's interesting is that she says clearly there's trauma there for him,

but that he's strong. And she's someone you sort of need to listen to on that because they have this curious connection. He always told her that he learned from her a lot about how to be resilient and post-traumatic growth versus post-traumatic stress because she understood confinement, and that's because she was kidnapped at one point in Afghanistan. All that is to say that that experience gives me a unique window, a tiny window to what he might be going through, although it's very difficult to understand the

totality of that. Yeah, I was astonished to learn that she's been through this experience herself. Yeah, it is. It is striking. I mean, just when you think there isn't another interesting phenomenon about this woman, along comes this. And what's key is that, you know, I guess he helped her heal and listen to her, but then really ingested a lot of these lessons. And so she seems pretty sure he's applying them right now. And Michael is incredible. I mean, he is using this experience. He calls it his enforced sabbatical. And that if there's

nothing else, he's going to come out of this having read more books, having thought more profoundly and deeply about his life. I understand he also uses song lyrics to connect with his family. Can you tell me a bit about that? It's interesting. So I really like to sit down with him one day. Like he has this extraordinary retention for lyrics and book titles. I think part of what happens is he challenges his family and colleagues

every now and then. He sends them, you know, the song of the month or reminds them of a song. And he loves Leonard Cohen. Thematically, from what Veena says, he seems to right now love songs about the light. So you know the song Lovers in a Dangerous Time? Yes.

Bruce Coburn wrote it. Bare Naked Ladies. I can sort of hear them singing it. And there's a line in it which he sent in one of his letters which is that got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight and Michael keeps reminding us to to continue kicking to keep trying to do whatever we can. Lovers in a dangerous time So now after months of silence,

Veena received a letter from Michael just this week. Yeah, she just, she got it maybe 24 hours after the second story aired. It's a coincidence, entirely possible it's a coincidence. So basically what happens with the letters is that they go to the Chinese embassy. They're sort of scanned and sent to the embassy and translated. And then they're sort of scanned and sent to the embassy and translated, and then they're shared with the family, and then eventually a hard copy sort of comes in the post. And these

letters, they seem to have been written on June 3rd and June 4th, so presumably they would have been sent to the embassy quite some time ago, they would have had them. And they're lengthy, one's like eight pages long, another's a bit shorter, they're for the. And they're lengthy. One's like eight pages long. Another's a bit shorter. They're for the family. They're for Veena. There's another song lyric in there from Moby's Extreme Ways. And I guess the idea being that, you know,

maybe that's what it will take is Extreme Ways. And as Veena says, you know, if you only knew what was going on right now. She does, though, Josh, she sees this as a gesture. It is perhaps a coincidence, or it is perhaps a gesture. Right. So she believes that perhaps because she's spoken out calling for the release of Meng Wanzhou, that that's why she's now receiving this letter? That's right.

So what Veena has done is she consulted sort of high-profile lawyers to say, would you please look at the Extradition Act? Is there an option? Is there something Canada can do right now to facilitate the release or to stop the extradition process of Meng Wanzhou, which many people believe would automatically or soon thereafter lead to the release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor? So Brian Greenspan looked at the act and he says, you know what, Vina, you're right. In 1999, there was a change to the language of the Extradition Act.

Which provides the Minister of Justice with the power to intervene in an extradition at any point during the first phase, namely the judicial phase. So the Minister has the right to withdraw the authority to proceed and to end the extradition proceeding, and it's totally at the discretion of the Minister of Justice. Presumably, that was a safety valve put into the law in 1999, in the event that there was an extradition that, for whatever reason, not in Canada's interest or whatever, was not a good idea to proceed with. So Greenspan has written this legal opinion. It was delivered to the Canadian government on May 22nd.

It has been viewed by Louis Arbour, who, you know, former Supreme Court Justice, also Michael Kovrig's boss at one point at the International Crisis Group, Alan Rock, a number of people who said, interesting. At this point, I would say clearly the minister has the authority, the responsibility to look at this case on an ongoing basis to see if he should proceed with it. And at this stage and early on, I think the answer should have been no and should be no today. So yes, Canada does have an option that would allow it to make a move and still maintain judicial independence, which is what we keep hearing from the Canadian government, right? That it's very important that the courts be allowed to do what they need to do. The point

Veena and the lawyers seem to be making is, absolutely, you can do that and do this and still maintain the independence. Whether Canada should take this action is another conversation. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%.

That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. So the presumption is that the two Michaels were detained in retaliation after Canada arrested Huawei CFO Meng Wenzhou on the request of the United States. detained in retaliation after Canada arrested Huawei CFO Meng Wenzhou on the request of the United States. And in fact, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made a direct link between those arrests. So I presume that that's how Veena and Kovrig's family see his case. No, absolutely. They're quite clear that Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are pawns in a geopolitical tug of war.

This has happened before, they would argue. The Chinese have sort of continued to make the link. Always, you know, when asked about the Michaels, you will often hear a reference to Canada needs to correct its mistakes. you will often hear a reference to Canada needs to correct its mistakes. That is thought by many to be a link to Huawei and Meng Wanzhou. Having lived in China, having studied China, having studied international affairs and being in the world that I'm in of politics and diplomacy, it wasn't hard to put two and two together.

We also know that documents released about the Mung case indicate that there was advice early on, before she was picked up, that if you complete this detention counter, there could be retaliation. So yes, you know, the family always figured Canada knew what it was doing, and knew what it was risking, and went ahead anyway, and have always wondered, you know, the family's always wondered, like, why did Canada do this? Was it out of a fear of angering the United States? Hard to know. Was it because it was the right thing to do? Hard to know. But the suggestion that Canada would be completely caught off guard by the arrest of Canadians

following the picking up of Meng Wanzhou just doesn't seem genuine. completely caught off guard by the arrest of Canadians following the picking up of Meng Wanzhou just doesn't seem genuine. And I think that at this stage, the government has opened itself to the charge of having betrayed the cause of Michael and that there are means it had not taken which were there for the taking.

Do the right thing. This is about people's lives, not politics. So what does Bina actually want Canada to do here? What is the alternative? So she is asking that the government re-examine the Extradition Act and simply have a conversation, simply acknowledge that it is possible for the Minister of Justice to step in right now, and could have happened previously, and stop the extradition process, and then have the conversation about, is that a good idea? Is it in Canada's interest to do

so? And that is a conversation we should be having instead of hiding behind a supposed independence of judiciary and so forth. Let's have that conversation. Should the minister do that and how would the minister do that? The should question is the really tricky one, many people would argue. Louise Arbour says Canada was always between a rock and a hard place. It seemed to me there was not a lot of merits in moving forward with this extradition request. It has a very strong political undertone. You know, it's the U.S. trying to apply U.S. sanctions, not United Nations sanctions, U.S. sanctions, and at the same time knowing that there will be very serious repercussions in the bilateral relations with China.

Her impression seems to be all told this was really not in Canada's interest to proceed. And so it's a good idea to stop it right now. Lots of arguments on the other side. Well, what are the arguments on the other side? Well, some people will say, is this not a bit like negotiating with hostage takers? Are you effectively now painting targets on the backs of other Canadians? You know, will this lead to a perception of Canada giving in to bullying from China? Other people will say, well, what's going to be the effect of the relationship with the United States after that?

These are very big political questions are very big political questions. Very big political questions. But Veena's point is it's not a legal question. That the legality of this is clear. That something can be done. Be brave enough to acknowledge that and be brave enough to then have the conversation about whether it should be done. Marco Medocino is the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.

Why isn't it even in the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. Why isn't it even in the realm of consideration for your government? Because we believe in the different branches of government. And as I have said before, it's an intricate process. It's a complex process that is being undertaken by the parties before the courts. At that point, the point at which the court will take a decision,

perhaps it will come to the government, but we do not want to preempt that. Is there any indication that Vina speaking out has affected the government's approach to this case? That's a really good question. I don't know. Vina maintains that they have not heard since the Canadian government saw that legal opinion. It was prepared May 22nd. They probably had it in early June. Last time I spoke with her, they still had not heard from the Canadian government. We've had a few statements sent to us

from the Attorney General and the Minister of Justice's office. Key points basically being they're well aware of the law and the rules and the processes. It's not appropriate to comment further. I've come to understand that several prominent legal and political

and diplomatic figures have written to the Prime Minister to say, think about this, think about this. So has it moved the dial for Canada? I'm not sure. It's been interesting, Josh, to watch Beijing overnight. So you do the stories in the evening, and then you watch to see through the time zones

what happens overnight. Most recently, China acknowledged, sort of the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs acknowledged that he had seen the stories, he'd heard her. We saw on the 23rd, Michael Kovrig's wife said during an interview that the Minister of Justice of Canada can stop the extradition procedure of Meng Wanzhou at any time. This is legal and also helpful to solve the issues of the two Canadians.

But Vina heard something else in the briefing that she found interesting, which is that for the very first time, they said that they will resume consular visits once the pandemic allows. That's the first time the family's heard a commitment to do that. That meant a lot to them. I gather they found the tone a bit softer than it has been previously in that not as much anger. I think that was probably a relief. that was probably a relief. These are tiny, tiny moments of comfort. It's 563 days, like enough, they say. But when they hear,

they're parsing every breath, every word, and at least that the consular visits will resume, that there was perhaps the coincidence of a letter arriving today. These to them, they make today a bit better than yesterday. We've been speaking about Veena's relationship with her husband and her advocacy for her husband, but of course, she's also fighting this battle to bring back Michael Spavor. Absolutely.

And, you know, the Spavor family is not at a point where anyone in the family wants to talk. And you can entirely understand that. You know, they must be very nervous. This is a deeply private thing that is playing out publicly, and it's got to be horrible. And so Veena is in touch with him. And she says, you know, this is not Veena fighting for one man. She's fighting for both men. And if you watch her and listen to her, you get the impression there isn't anything she's not going to try. She is, you know, she is meticulous. She is filled with integrity.

She is so smart. And she's so determined on both their behalves. I have my good days and bad. I am okay. Like I, I have a mission. I draw strength from Michael. I read his letters when I get really down. I rely on the many, many people who have rallied behind him and who have supported me. Friends, colleagues around the world who have been with us every step through every chapter of this incredible, surreal, bizarre, heartbreaking, infuriating journey. I'm okay. Adrienne, thank you so much for sharing your insight into this. Not at all.

And before I let you go today, a bit of a development on this story. A group of high-profile Canadians say that Justice Minister David Lamedi should end extradition proceedings against Meng Wanzhou. In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the signatory said that Lamedi should set aside concerns about the rule of law, specifically Canada's obligations under its extradition agreement with the United States, and politically intervene, and that freeing Meng Wanzhou could also free Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. It's been signed by the likes of former Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy, former Conservative Foreign Affairs

Minister Lawrence Cannon, and former NDP leader Ed Broadbent. As it stands now, the extradition proceedings against the Huawei executive are expected to play out well into 2021. That's it for today. I'm Josh Bloch. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.