The anatomy of a red-scare smear campaign against activists calling for release of Meng Wanzhou
Photo Credit: (Ken Stone/Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War)
Written by: Aidan Jonah
The smear campaign against activists seeking to free Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou has been a vociferous, yet memorable one.
It has been defined by the refusal of the perpetrators to acknowledge the reality of Meng Wanzhou’s situation. It is one defined by illegal US sanctions, along with the American quest to annihilate Iran.
This all began when the US illegally pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018. This occurred two months after Iran dropped the US dollar. Under the JCPOA, signed in 2015, Iran had limited nuclear development and submitted to yearly inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In exchange, the crippling sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council were supposed to end. Iran also gained access to more than $100B in assets frozen overseas, and was able to resume selling oil on international markets, and begin using the global financial system for trade.
After pulling out of the deal, the US unilaterally reimposed crippling sanctions on the Iranian economy, and introduced secondary sanctions on countries and corporations that engage in trade with Iran. In response, remaining signatories to the deal indicated their anger, while the European Union created a financial instrument to enable EU corporations to trade without financial penalties.
Despite this, several European banks have been taken to court by the US, seeking to punish them for skirting sanctions on Iran. One thing they’d never attempted before, was to extradite a corporate executive having dealings with Iran. That changed with the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in transit at Vancouver Airport over two years ago.
Ms. Wanzhou was accused of violating the illegal US sanctions against Iran. The pretext for this manoeuvre was that, “banks can be found criminally liable if they help move money out of a sanctioned country and into the broader global banking system.” It is alleged that Huawei used Skycom as a proxy company to conduct business in Iran. Wanzhou’s link stems from allegations made by US prosecutors that she was on the Skycom board in the early 2010s. Wanzhou firmly denies these allegations, while her lawyers describe the HSBC documents alleging this to present “deliberate and/or reckless misstatements of fact and material omissions.”
The indictment against Wanzhou was approved by a New York State court on August 22, 2018. The USA proceeded to pressure dozens of countries to arrest Wanzhou as she passed through their border controls. Canada was the only country to accede to the request, and RCMP officers arrested her on December 1, 2018 in Vancouver.
Five days later, Trump said he would consider releasing Meng Wanzhou if it helped a favourable trade deal being reached with China. In former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton’s book, The Room Where it Happened, he revealed that Trump viewed Meng as “a bargaining chip” in trade negotiations with China.
Based on the US “superseding indictment“ announced on January 24, 2019, Wanzhou has since been charged with seven counts of bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit both, plus conspiracy to defraud the US, all of which if proven carries possible sentences of more than 100 years in a US federal penitentiary, plus heavy fines.
Ever since her detention in Canada, Wanzhou has been fighting attempts to extradite her to the US, to face charges based on the illegal sanctions on Iran. She has now been under house arrest for 23 months.
Canada’s participation in the US trade war with China has ramped up since October 2018. Wanzhou’s arrest was an important development, which led to declining trade relations with China. The Five Eyes security network, of which Canada is a part, has actively pushed to exclude Huawei from participating in the deployment of 5G networks in all Five Eyes countries (US, UK, NZ, Australia). A bipartisan influence campaign from the US Select Intelligence Committee, led by Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Democrat Senator Mark Warner, made false allegations of Chinese espionage utilizing Huawei technology as part of a fearmongering campaign aimed at blocking Huawei from 5G networks.
Canada blocked Huawei from participating in the building of 5G networks on August 25, 2020. On November 23, 2020, Telus was the last of Canada’s three telecom giants to confirm that it would build its 5G networks without Huawei.
The Campaign to Free Meng Wanzhou
The campaign to free Meng Wanzhou began soon after Wanzhou’s arrest, but has ramped up in the past two months. The coalition of groups seeking to help free Meng Wanzhou released their introductory statement regarding the Cross-Canada Campaign, along with the announcement of parliamentary petition e-2857 on September 29, 2020.
This petition, sponsored by NDP MP Niki Ashton, called for Meng Wanzhou’s release and condemned the illegal US sanctions which led up to her arrest.
The coalition emailed a media release to several hundred Canadian and foreign media outlets. Ken Stone of the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War explained that not a single Canadian mainstream media outlet responded to the release. Mr. Stone credited alternative Canadian media for covering the campaign, when mainstream media utterly failed to do so.
In early October, Ken Stone wrote an article explaining why people should support the campaign. A week later, Henry Evans-Tenbrinke wrote an open letter to Canada’s defence minister, Harjit Sajjan, calling for Wanzhou’s release and an end to “Canada’s hostage diplomacy.” They both noted that under the Extradition Act, Justice Minister David Lametti has the authority to halt the extradition proceedings at any time. This belief is shared by prominent defence lawyer Brian Greenspan, Allan Rock, Canada’s justice minister and attorney-general from 1993 to 1997, Louise Arbour, a former international war-crimes prosecutor and “a group of high-profile Canadians, including former parliamentarians and senior diplomats.”
On November 13, 2020, the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War announced the “Zoom to Free Meng Wanzhou!”, to be held on November 24, 2020, in collaboration with the Canadian Peace Congress, World Beyond War, Canadian Peace Congress, Just Peace Advocates and the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.
The event featured NDP MP Niki Ashton, Green Party MP Paul Manly, criminal lawyer John Philpot, economics professor Atif Kubursi, veteran journalist KJ Noh and former labour activist Cathy Walker.
The campaign against the organizers and panelists was started by CPC Shadow Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Raquel Dancho, who smeared Manly and Ashton for committing to be panelists for the “Zoom to Free Meng Wanzhou”. Dancho baselessly accused them of “supporting ‘Chinese Communist Party propaganda’”.
A tweet by Marcus Kolga, a senior fellow with the foreign funded (by Latvia and the Taiwan area) Macdonald-Laurier Institute, served as the template for a stream of smears and attacks on Twitter. It should be noted how convenient it is, that the two countries these funders hate, Russia and China, are the countries most often demonized by Kolga and the MLI.
This set off a firestorm of last minute news articles and columns discrediting the event and its participants. National Post columnist John Ivison attacked Ashton and the event organizers in a recent column, describing them as “useful idiots.” Legal Reader writer Alistair Vigier’s article headline read “Zoom to Free Meng Wanzhou Event Accused of Receiving Funds from China.” A Globe and Mail article discussing the event contained this slur from Gloria Fung, president of Hong Kong Link:
“I am appalled to hear members of Parliament proposing that we surrender to [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s hostage diplomacy. That would put a target on the backs of other Canadians in China.”
For a Toronto Star article on the subject, Ken Stone was reportedly asked by Kieran Leavitt “if any of the organizers was receiving funding from the People's Republic of China or the Communist Party of China?” Then he asked, “if we weren't arguing for restoring friendly relations with a country committing genocide against Uyghurs.”
Evan Solomon of CTV News’ Power Play, interviewed Paul Manly on at least two occasions, asking him if he thought he was being used as a tool of the Chinese government.
Former NDP candidate Meena Wong’s accusation that the Free Meng Wanzhou campaign “plays into the hands of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party],” was published by the South China Morning Post.
The federal NDP refused to back Niki Ashton, instead indicating the importance of following “the rule of law.” Their cowardice on this issue is truly par for the course for Jagmeet Singh’s leadership of the party.
On the day of the event, Ashton suddenly backed out, leading the organizers to state that “Our final speaker Niki Ashton has been unable to attend at the last minute.”
Instead, a speech written by Ashton was read to the audience. It noted “the rising tide of Trump-style Sinophobia and about what is increasingly becoming a new cold war (with China).”
She had been targeted with smears since sponsoring the petition, yet none of her NDP colleagues, nor the party leadership provided any support to her principled foreign policy stance. This lack of support was very likely the deciding factor in her choice to pull out of the event.
Despite this, over 250 people tuned into the Zoom panel and more than 1,000 watched it livestreamed on Facebook, making the event a clear success.
Ken Stone believes that despite smears against those campaigning for Wanzhou’s freedom, “the organizers weren't the useful idiots, but rather (people like) John Ivison, who gave us tons and tons of free publicity.”
Day of Action occurs despite smear attempts
On December 1, 2020, the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War led organizing for a cross-Canada day of action to free Meng Wanzhou. At noon, dozens of protesters (limited in number due to COVID-19 restrictions) congregated in front of MP offices and Supreme Court buildings in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Regina, Vancouver and Hamilton. Supporters also took selfies while holding a Free Meng Wanzhou sign to post on social media and email to their local MP. They also took part in an Action Alert, where a person could generate a letter from a template, to be sent to every member of Parliament. One of the picketers posted video of the event in TikTok and received 8,000 hits in the following 24 hours.
Ken Stone noted that the parliamentary petition sponsored by Niki Ashton had reached more than 700 signatures, far above the required 500 signatures, necessary for it to be addressed by parliament. In about two months, the petition will be presented in the House of Commons by Ms. Ashton, following which the Trudeau government has a period of 45 days in which to make a formal response.
The movement will continue to grow, with recognition by parliament on the horizon, and a burgeoning public conscious of the dangers that supporting Wanzhou’s extradition poses to Canadian sovereignty.
It is high time for Canadians to fight for a government that would act independently of the U.S. on the world stage. Instead of getting mired in controversies created at the whim of a U.S. president, Canada and its government should stand in solidarity with the peoples of the world and join in fighting for a world of social justice and ecological balance.
Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news site founded in 2019. He has written about Canadian imperialism, federal politics, and left-wing resistance to colonialism across the world. He is a second-year Bachelor of Journalism student at Ryerson University, who was the Head of Communications and Community Engagement for Etobicoke North NDP Candidate Naiima Farah in the 2019 Federal Election.
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