CNN reports that the Chinese government has sentenced a Canadian to death for drug-dealing:
Beijing (CNN)Relations between Beijing and Ottawa are at crisis point after a Canadian man was sentenced to death by a Chinese court, a former Canadian ambassador to China told CNN.
Canada’s foreign ministry issued a travel warning late Monday to its citizens in China over “the risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws.” It came in the wake of the death sentence handed to Robert Lloyd Schellenberg during a one-day retrial in the city of Dalian.
Schellenberg had initially appealed a 15-year prison sentence for being an accessory in a plot to smuggle more than 222 kilograms (489.4 pounds) of methamphetamine from the northeastern port city to Australia in November 2014. But during the retrial, the court sided with the prosecution, which claimed to have uncovered new evidence proving Schellenberg’s principal role in the case.
I point this case out not to highlight how awful the Chinese regime is but as yet another example of different countries being different with different values and different laws. When you travel to another country, you should expect the laws and customs of those countries to apply to you and, in the case of countries in which the rule of law may be somewhat capricious, their arbitrary decisions apply to you, too.
That doesn’t just apply to Americans or Canadians travelling abroad. That pertains to Chinese and Saudis here in the United States as well. If you want your own country’s laws to apply to you, stay home.
