Canadian Couple in secrets probe
Print Edition
CHINA is investigating a Canadian couple who ran a coffee shop on the Chinese border with North Korea on suspicion of stealing military and intelligence information and threatening national security, China’s foreign ministry said yesterday.
Xinhua news agency identified the two as Kevin Garratt and Julia Dawn Garratt.
Xinhua said the State Security Bureau of Dandong City in the northeastern Liaoning Province was investigating the case, adding that it involved the theft of state secrets.
Neither the foreign ministry nor Xinhua said whether the couple had been detained, although the ministry said the Canadian embassy in Beijing was notified on Monday and that the couple’s “various rights have been fully guaranteed.”
The embassy said it was aware of reports that two Canadians had been “detained” and was gathering information.
Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail said the Vancouver couple had been living in China since 1984 and opened a coffee shop called Peter’s Coffee House in Dandong, a key gateway to North Korea, in 2008. The couple previously worked as teachers in southern China.
The newspaper said that the whereabouts of the Garratts was unknown.
Calls by Reuters to the coffee shop went unanswered.
“Kevin Garratt and his wife ... are suspected of collecting and stealing intelligence materials related to Chinese military targets and important Chinese national defense scientific research programs, and engaging in activities that endanger China’s national security,” the Foreign Ministry said in a short statement.
The Garratts’ Western-style restaurant, which bears a sign offering French toast and hot dogs, has a view of traffic flowing across the Yalu River that divides China and North Korea.
Shades covered the windows yesterday, and the entrance was shut up. A chalkboard sign in a window read in English: “Sorry, we are closed.”
“See you soon!” it added, with a smiley face underneath.
The couple also had a side business helping intrepid travelers plan tours to North Korea, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported.
“It was open during the day (on Monday), and the police came during the evening,” a woman working in a seafood restaurant next door said.
Dandong is a stopover for North Korean traders and officials traveling between North Korea and northeast China. It is also a magnet for foreign reporters seeking information on North Korea. The city is home to an air force base, according to Chinese military blogs.
The cafe is only three blocks from the Friendship Bridge that spans the Yalu River, and its website calls the venue the “perfect stop-off while on route to or returning from the Hermit Kingdom.”
A large police station is located two doors down, and a sign posted near the river warns passers-by not to photograph or film military installations.
The shop also runs a weekly “English Corner” conversation club, where Chinese can practice speaking English. A map of the world posted on a wall inside the shop bears the words “where are you from?” with bright pushpins at different locations.
The Globe and Mail said the shop was named after the couple’s youngest son Peter. The couple had three children, said David Etter, an American who knew the family and had run a restaurant in another city bordering North Korea. He said the Garratts had lived in Dandong for at least six years.
Their son Simeon described his parents as “openly Christian” and said they had visited North Korea several times. They were involved in sending humanitarian supplies to “help basically what they feel is a group of people that have been severely neglected.”
His parents had been unreachable since Monday evening, added Garrett, 27, who runs a software company in Vancouver.
In an audio file posted on the website of the Terra Nova church in Surrey, British Columbia, Kevin Garratt tells the congregation: “We’re China based, we’re North Korea focused, but we’re Jesus centered.”
In a guest sermon dated November last year, he said: “God said, in a prayer meeting, go to Dandong and I’ll meet you there, and he said start a coffee house.
“We serve the best coffee on the border... and we do some other things too. We’re trying to reach North Korea with God, with Jesus, and practical assistance.”
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
