Medieval practices in the modern age.

Is there anyone who thinks that the arrest of Meng Wan Zhou was not political?  If so perhaps they should read the following piece by Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs. 

In it he names over twenty international banks (including all of the big ones such as J P Morgan Chase, HSBC etc.), which, since 2010 alone, have paid fines for violations of US Government sanctions against Iran and other countries.  But Jaime Dimon was not grabbed off of a plane and taken into custody or even charged with anything.  Nor was any other bank executive.  

Sachs rightly asserts that corporate leaders involved in criminal wrongdoing should be prosecuted, rather than the authorities allowing their companies to negotiate fines with prosecutors.  But he points out that very few American CEOs or CFOs have faced such prosecution, in spite of the manifest wrongdoing associated with the 2008 crash.  But Meng was arrested, and she now faces years of house arrest while lawyers argue over her extradition.  An earlier extradition case in Canada, involving Rakesh Saxena, an Indian financier accused by the Thai Government of embezzlement, took 13 years to resolve before he was finally extradited!  

And yesterday, as if to confirm the political nature of the arrest, the American president himself said he might intervene if it helped in his trade dispute with China!   It is almost an admission that she is being taken as a hostage.  No doubt her legal team took note. 

Once again the USA is violating international norms, undermining the trust and the rule of law which underlie cooperation between governments.  Taking foreign leaders hostage for ransom or leverage was something that happened in the Middle Ages.  Surely we have collectively realised the damaging nature of such practice. 

W. H. Auden in his poem September, 1939 called the 1930s a ‘low, dishonest decade’.   It seems that in the first two decades of the 21st. century we are following down similar dark paths, pioneered pre World War II.  

I hope that the Canadian extradition court, will take the political nature of this arrest into consideration and deny the US request.  Don’t hold your breath though - it could be many years before Meng Wan Zhou leaves Vancouver.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-us-not-china-is-the-real-threat-to-international-rule-of-law/