China executed four Canadians earlier this year, says Ottawa

China has executed four Canadians in recent months, Canada’s foreign affairs minister has said.

Melanie Joly said she and former prime minister Justin Trudeau had asked for clemency in the drug-related accusations involving the dual citizens.

Beijing’s embassy in Ottawa said the executions were due to drug crimes and noted that China does not recognise dual citizenship.

“I asked personally for leniency … They were all dual citizens.”

Ms Joly said Canada consistently asks for clemency for Canadians facing the death penalty abroad. She said the families had asked the government to withhold details of the identity of the four individuals.

Global Affairs spokeswoman Charlotte MacLeod said they continued to provide consular assistance to families and requested that the media respect their privacy.

“China always imposes severe penalties on drug-related crimes,” a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy said.

“The facts of the crimes committed by the Canadian nationals involved in the cases are clear, and the evidence is solid and sufficient.”

China is believed to execute more prisoners each year than the rest of the world combined, the total is a state secret. Executions are traditionally carried out by gunshot, although lethal injections have been introduced in recent years.

The embassy spokesperson said Beijing “fully guaranteed the rights and interests of the Canadian nationals concerned”, and urged Canada’s government to “stop making irresponsible remarks”.

“China is sending us a message that we have to take steps if we want to see an improvement in the relationship,” said a former Canadian ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques.

Ian Brodie, a former chief of staff to ex-Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, posted on social media that it turns out “agricultural tariffs weren’t the worst part of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) response to EV tariffs”.

And opposition Conservative politician Michael Chong said “executing a number of Canadians in short order is unprecedented, and is clearly a sign that Beijing has no intention of improving relations with Canada”.

China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, but relations have been bad since Canadian authorities arrested a former Huawei executive in 2018 who the US had charged with fraud.

Many countries called China’s action “hostage politics”, while China described the charges against Huawei and Ms Meng as a politically motivated attempt to hold back China’s economic and technological development.

Amnesty International condemned the executions and noted that China executed thousands of people in 2023.

“These shocking and inhumane executions of Canadian citizens by Chinese authorities should be a wake-up call for Canada,” the group’s head for English-speaking Canada, Ketty Nivyabandi, said in a statement.