"Canada should respect the spirit of the rule of law and stop interfering in China's judiciary sovereignty." On Thursday, March 20, Mao Ning, spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, did not appreciate the fact that Mélanie Joly, the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, had the day before "strongly condemned" the execution in recent weeks of four Canadians involved in a drug case. These executions were made public by Ottawa.

This case is reminiscent of the one on December 29, 2009, when Akmal Shaikh, a British father-of-three of Pakistani origin, was executed for carrying 4 kilograms of heroin on his way to Xinjiang province two years earlier. The ultimate punishment was meted out despite repeated appeals for clemency from then Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who had cited the British national's poor mental health. The defendant's family explained that he was bipolar and had been duped by Polish traffickers, who had promised him a career as a pop singer in China in exchange for a favor.

Through the official China News Agency, the Chinese Supreme Court had retorted that it had not received any official document demonstrating that he was mentally disabled. Shaikh was the first citizen of a European country to be executed in China since 1951, when Antonio Riva, an Italian Air Force pilot, was accused of plotting to assassinate Mao Zedong.

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