'They're never going to see me cry': Michael Kovrig shares experience of more than 1,000 days in Chinese detainment

It's been exactly three years since Canadian Michael Kovrig returned to Canada after spending 1,019 days in a Chinese prison. Now, he's publicly speaking out about his arrest and detainment for the first time.

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"They're never going to see me cry. They're not going to see me being weak, because if they do, they'll exploit that," Kovrig said in an interview with CTV National News Chief Anchor Omar Sachedina about his mindset while in captivity.

On Dec. 10, 2018, Kovrig and fellow Canadian Michael Spavor were separately detained by China on allegations of espionage, just days after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada on behalf of the U.S. Their detention was widely considered to be in retaliation for Meng's arrest and garnered international headlines.

'She doesn't know if she's ever going to see me again'

Kovrig previously worked as a Canadian diplomat but was working as an adviser and analyst for the International Crisis Group based in Hong Kong at the time of his arrest.

On the night of Dec. 10, 2018, Kovrig was in Beijing to visit his pregnant girlfriend and was taken after returning home from dinner.

"They grabbed me and in front of my pregnant girlfriend, dragged me into a black SUV, stuffed me into the back seat, put a set of handcuffs on me, blindfolded me and drove off into the night," Kovrig told Sachedina.

"You can imagine what that was like for (my girlfriend). It's an abrupt shock while she's pregnant, and she doesn't know if she's going to see me ever again."

Once at a secret location, Kovrig was placed in an interrogation chair and told he was suspected of endangering China's national security.

'It's psychologically exceedingly difficult': Kovrig on solitary confinement

It took more than 18 months after Kovrig's arrest for him to be formally charged and China has never publicly produced material evidence to back up the charges against him. Kovrig said he spent his first five months of detainment in solitary confinement with blackout blinds over the windows.

"You're never actually alone. They've always got guards in there with you, and they're constantly looking at you," Kovrig told Sachedina.

"Of course, that sense of confinement combined with constant surveillance really gets into your skull. It's psychologically exceedingly difficult to deal with."

According to the United Nations, solitary confinement for more than 15 days is considered torture.

Kovrig said Chinese officials used a "whole host of psychological manipulation techniques" to try to coerce a confession out of him, including cutting his food rations.

"They're gaslighting you. They're actually drawing you into a world day after day, minute by minute, hour by hour, in which up is down and black is white and night is day," Kovrig described. "Until you accept all the wrong things that you've done, you're going to continue to be punished."

When asked by Sachedina how he was able to stay mentally strong during those long months, Kovrig said, "I had the determination of no choice."

"I told myself really early on that they're never going to see me cry. They're not going to see me being weak, because if they do, they'll exploit that," Kovrig said.

While in confinement, Kovrig said he did yoga and meditation to help pass the time. He was later moved to a pre-trial detention facility in May 2019. At that facility, Kovrig said he didn't have a name for two years and was treated "like a criminal."

Shortly after his detainment began, Kovrig got a consular visit from Canada's then-ambassador to China John McCallum and learned he was being held as a human bargaining chip to blackmail Canada into releasing Meng. But Kovrig says he only gradually learned about the scale of the geopolitics at play in his case through his monthly consular visits.

"Gradually, over time, I was able to kind of piece together the bread crumbs and figure out that this was quite a big deal and very public," Kovrig told Sachedina. "It was really only once I actually came back that I could appreciate how geopolitically significant it was that Canada had been dragged into this geopolitical grudge match between the United States and China."

Both Kovrig and Spavor went to trial in March 2021 with little notice given to the Canadian government. Spavor was eventually found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in prison, while Kovrig had been awaiting a verdict prior to his release. In China, most tried cases end up in conviction.

Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor stand as they are recognized before U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to Parliament in Ottawa, Mach 24, 2023. (Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP)

'A very powerful moment': Kovrig on his return home to Canada

On Sept. 24, 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced China had released both Kovrig and Spavor and they were returning home. The dramatic reversal came hours after Meng struck a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

At the time, it meant the DOJ would hold off on prosecution until December 2022. Since Meng complied with conditions set by the court, fraud charges against her were eventually dismissed.

Canada's former ambassador to China, Dominic Barton, was the one to deliver the news to Kovrig.

"He told me that I would be going home, that they had finally found a solution," Kovrig said. "That was, of course, a very powerful moment."

Upon his return to Canada, Kovrig met his then two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Clara for the very first time.

"I could finally hold my daughter, and she's such a happy, friendly little kid," Kovrig recounted. "I was worried. Is she going to be, 'Who's this weird guy?' She wasn't like that at all."

Kovrig said his daughter is named after his grandmother, but the name took on another meaning.

"Sitting in a situation like that, trapped in a cell in darkness, I wanted to always remind myself that we need to try to see clearly," Kovrig explained. "Clara for clear. To have that strategic clarity and understand the situations around us and figure out how to deal with them."

Michael Kovrig with his daughter Clara. (Courtesy of Michael Kovrig)

Canada 'underestimated' China's response to Meng Wanzhou arrest

Asked if Canada did enough to secure his timely release, Kovrig said "there was no lack of effort by the Canadian government" once the crisis started.

But he did say Canada "underestimated" how China would respond once the decision was made to arrest Meng on behalf of the U.S.

"The biggest challenge was that they were unprepared for it," Kovrig said. "They underestimated the Chinese Communist Party, and they underestimated its ruthlessness and its capacity to use any tactic like that."

Kovrig also told Sachedina that the U.S. "didn't really anticipate" China's response.

"I think there are a lot of important lessons to be learned from it," Kovrig said. "The critical one is simply that it took a long time for the Canadian government to figure out the best way to deal with it, and it may not have used all the leverage and the options that it had available to it because it was such an unusual circumstance."

Kovrig on allegations of espionage: 'It's false'

Last November, the Globe and Mail reported Spavor was seeking a multimillion-dollar settlement from Ottawa, claiming he was duped by Kovrig into giving up information on North Korea that ultimately led to his arrest. Following that report, Kovrig denied he was ever a spy and today, he maintains those allegations are false.

"To the best of my knowledge, nothing like that happened. That's the simple answer," Kovrig told Sachedina.

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Prior to his arrest, Spavor was an entrepreneur who worked to promote business and cultural ties between North Korea and the West.

While in detainment in China, Kovrig said he and Spavor both "supported each other."

"He never expressed that to me," Kovrig said about the claim he duped Spavor. "That was expressed by anonymous sources, quoting a lawyer who was in the middle of negotiations, and you can imagine that in negotiations, people are going to say all sorts of things."

When asked by Sachedina whether that reporting has impacted his relationship with Spavor, Kovrig would only say, "I haven't been in touch with him since then."

This past March, Spavor reached a settlement with the federal government reportedly worth between $6 million and $7 million.

Discussions involving Kovrig's settlement are still ongoing. He says his main objective is to get back the income he lost during the three years he was detained.