The strategy of states taking hostages to gain an upper hand in negotiations has been around for centuries and is well-documented in ancient China, Middle Eastern empires, and Medieval Europe. The age-old practice has continued well into the 21st century and has in fact seen a marked uptick in recent times.
Last week, the German foreign ministry announced that Iran had detained one of its citizens on espionage charges. It is estimated that the Iranian government currently has between 20 and 40 foreign detainees on suspicious grounds.
Furthermore, American basketball star Britney Griner was detained by Russian authorities in February after the United States imposed sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine war. Griner was sentenced to nine years in prison for possessing less than a gram of cannabis oil.
China, Myanmar, Turkey, and North Korea, too, have turned to hostage diplomacy.
Despite being widely condemned as a discriminatory practice, hostage taking continues to flourish and has unsurprisingly worked to the advantage of countries using the strategy.
The immediate reason why the strategy continues to work lies in the fact that international law does little to address this issue. Currently, the only international treaty that deals with such situations is the ‘International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages,’ which was adopted decades ago in 1979. Although the convention mentions that taking hostages is an offence and calls on countries to refrain from the practice, states can easily bypass the treaty.
For example, the convention mentions that it is not applicable if a person is detained within the territory of a country making the arrest. As a result, states usually arrest foreign citizens on arbitrary charges of espionage or endangering national security. The convention does not require states to submit evidence for their claims. According to analysts, this flaw in the treaty allows states to make “unjustified” detentions and makes it difficult for other states or organisations to challenge such decisions, as they fall under the domestic purview of the hostage-taking country.
Countries are thus essentially incentivised by international law to take hostages on bogus charges.
Iran, for instance, recently stated that it would consider releasing four American citizens who were detained by authorities between 2015 and 2020 if the United States agrees to restore the 2015 nuclear deal. Likewise, it released three British-Iranian dual citizens, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, shortly after the United Kingdom a 40-year-old $850 million debt with Iran.
Iran has also used hostage diplomacy to facilitate prisoner exchanges, such as in the case of Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele, who was released from Tehran last month in return for Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat convicted of trying to blow up a rally of Iranian opposition activists. It conducted a similar
More recently, Russia has used Griner to try to negotiate the release of a convicted assassin and an arms dealer. Russia has found success with this strategy in the past, even during the course of the Ukraine war. In April, for example, Russia released former US Marine Trevor Reed in exchange for Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was sentenced in the US in 2011 for drug smuggling.
International relations theorist Stephen Walt argues that this incentive to use hostages as “diplomatic pawns” overrides the risk to one’s international reputation, noting that it is “a way to gain coercive leverage” and an appealing option for countries that want to take “tit-for-tat” measures against their opponents.
One of the most prominent examples of this was China’s arrest of Canadian citizens Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig in 2018 following the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wangzhou in Vancouver on fraud charges. Spavor and Kovrig were freed in 2021 shortly after Canadian authorities released Meng. A more recent case was Myanmar’s detention of Vicky Bowman, a former British ambassador who was arrested and sentenced to five years in jail in retaliation to the UK imposing sanctions on Myanmar’s military.
These examples serve to illustrate the continued allure of hostage diplomacy and indeed the need to draft new international legislation to more effectively deter the practice. Apart from innocent civilians being caught in the crossfire of wider diplomatic tussles, hostage diplomacy can also result in dangerous and more importantly guilty individuals, including terrorists and war criminals, being released.
A study by Opinio Juris notes that without the further development of international law to address the flaws of the existing hostage convention, hostage-taking would continue to proliferate. Moreover, the lack of proper legal measures to tackle the issue means that innocent civilians would continue to be used as pawns in disputes. Additionally, by detaining foreign citizens, states could coerce other states to release guilty individuals, including terrorists and war criminals. Therefore, it has become clearer than ever that the ‘International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages’ must be adapted to require countries to provide internationally-recognised evidence when arresting foreign citizens.
What Makes Hostage Diplomacy So Attractive?
In the absence of a sustained effort to draft new internationally-binding legislation on hostage-taking, countries will have free rein to continue the controversial practice.
September 1, 2022
US basketball superstar Brittney Griner arrives at a hearing at the Khimki Court, outside Moscow on July 7, 2022. IMAGE SOURCE: AFP