China investigating two Canadian nationals on suspicion of espionage

The son of two Canadian expatriate cafe owners on the North Korean border who are being investigated for stealing state secrets has described the accusations as “wildly absurd” and dismissed the allegations against his parents.

Christian activists Kevin and Julia Dawn Garratt from Vancouver ran Peter’s Coffee House in Dandong, a Chinese trading city just across the Yalu River from North Korea, since 2008.

"It sounds so wildly absurd. I know for a fact it's not true," Simeon Garratt, the couple's 27-year-old son, told the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong.

“I just think it’s crazy,” Mr Garratt, who runs a software company in Vancouver, told the newspaper. “It sounds like something somebody made up. I really don’t know why.”

A brief statement on the Xinhua news agency said two Canadian nationals were under investigation for “suspected theft of state secrets about China’s military and national defence research”.

“The state security bureau of Dandong City, northeast China’s Liaoning province, is now investigating the case in accordance with law,” it said.

Dandong’s border crossing is a focal point for trade between China and North Korea, two ideological allies. Aid from China is said to provide a prop to keep the government of Kim Jong-un in power. It is also a sensitive military region, and has been a channel for Christian activists trying to access the secretive North.

Mr Garratt said his parents were “openly Christian” and had been involved in sending goods such as oil and cooking supplies to impoverished North Korea to “help basically what they feel is a group of people that have been severely neglected”.

The couple named the coffee house after their youngest son, Peter (21), who lives in Dandong, but Simeon Garratt returned to Canada several years ago.

The crime of stealing state secrets is a vague and wide- ranging one in China, often used as a way of punishing political dissidents.

The outspoken veteran journalist Gao Yu was detained on the charge in May, shortly before the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

The charge carries harsh penalties in China, ranging from 10 years in prison to the death penalty.

News of the couple’s arrest came just days after China denied an accusation by the Canadian treasury board that Chinese cyberspies had hacked into its computer systems at the national research council.

“It is irresponsible for the Canadian side to make groundless accusations against China when there is no credible evidence,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang in a statement last week.