Daily BrewSon of Canadians accused of spying in China shocked by allegations
Bewilderment. That's Simeon Garratt's central reaction to the arrest of his parents in China as alleged spies.
Kevin and Julia Dawn Garratt are being held in detention in the city of Dandong, on China's border with North Korea, accused of "suspected theft of state secrets about China's military and national defence research," according to a statement released through the Xinhua news service.
China's famously opaque justice system has released no details about how the longtime residents of China, who run a popular coffee shop that overlooks the main bridge between China and North Korea, could have led a secret life as spies.
Speculation has ranged from the Garratts being pawns in a tit-for-tat retaliation for Canada accusing China of state-sponsored hacking of the National Research Council's computer system to being caught up in the Communist government's latest crackdown against unsanctioned Christian churches.
None of it rings true to their eldest son, who grew up in China but now runs a firm in Vancouver specializing in software for the real estate industry.
“I really have no idea," Simeon Garratt, 27, said in an interview with Yahoo Canada News. "The allegations are so outlandish I really have no clue what could have spawned that.”
“When you start getting into these things you could speculate forever but at this point I really don’t think it’s strictly one thing. I think there’s probably a number of moving parts.
"My core belief it’s some sort of miscommunication that happened at some point along the way.”
A tragic misunderstanding, in other words.
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Nothing in his experience has prepared Garratt, who travelled to China with his parents when he was six months old, for claims they were acquiring secrets related to missile sites and national defence. For who?
“I can’t see why they would be [spying] for Canada," said Simeon, who's been told his parents are being held at a "non-government" detention centre.
"We’ve never had any problems in the past. There’s never been anything that would lead us to believe that anything like this could happen.”
The Garratts went to China right after they married, their son said.
"They both had degrees in teaching English as a second language and they really just wanted to move to China," he said.
"It’s something they’ve always been passionate about. They basically went there for one year to teach English and they never came back.”
Except for a couple of years when their children were finishing school in Ontario, the Garratts have lived in China since the mid-1980s.
They went back, said Simeon, because the had a passion for helping people in need.
“North Korea was one of those places," he said. "It’s one of the most impoverished places in the world.”
The Garratts worked with an organization called North Star Aid, a B.C.-based registered charity whose web site says it "seeks to serve the people of North Korea primarily through providing humanitarian aid."
Simeon Garratt said the group helps fund projects such as shipments of grain, building materials and other essential goods scare in the impoverished Stalinist state.
North Star Aid says it wants to be "a community that lives out the words and works of Jesus ... to feed the hungry and heal the sick."
Reuters reported Tuesday that Kevin Garratt had helped train North Koreans returning to their country as missionaries.
But Simeon Garratt said his parents were in no way involved in evangelical activities, which Chinese authorities frown on. He doubts their arrest is related to their Christian faith.
"The religious aspect of my parents’ lives is something that’s been very open for a long time," he said. "We went to Chinese churches growing up – the government churches. It was all very public.
"For something like that to suddenly take shape into allegations of this magnitude, it doesn’t really make sense to me. They’re just Christian people that really enjoy helping people, with an affinity for China. At the end of the day that’s really all it was.”
The Garratts' establishment, Peter's Coffee House, is on the main road leading to the Friendship Bridge linking China to North Korea. It's known for its North American cuisine and attracts a mix of tourists and locals.
“They sort of promoted it as a very community-type space that was very open to the Western world," said Simeon Garratt.
“Every Friday they had what was called English Corner. Several hundred people showing up in one night all speaking English, no Chinese allowed. It was a very social thing."
A counsellor at the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa tried to quash speculation of ulterior motives. Yang Yundong said there was "no need to over-interpret" the arrest of the Garratts, CTV News reported.
The Garratts' two daughters live in Canada, one at university in Vancouver, the other studying in Alberta.
Youngest son Peter, whose name graces the coffee house, lives near Dandong and studies Mandarin on a Chinese-government scholarship, said Simeon. He's has become the family's point man in the crisis. Members of North Star Aid are also working to obtain a lawyer for the couple, he said.
China's broad espionage laws leave the Garratts liable to imprisonment and even the death penalty but son Simeon said he does not fear for their lives at this point.
“I don’t know if we would say fearful but I think we’re definitely taking it very seriously," he said.
"My parents have been in China for a long time and they definitely know how to handle situations. They’ve dealt with the Chinese government on many different occasions but definitely never something quite this serious or even close to this serious.
“The main thing for me is the legacy of my parents’ work, what they’ve been doing for the last 30 years in China and how unrepresentative these types of charges are, based on what they’ve been doing. It really doesn’t make any sense on any level.”
