A chilling report, according to Safeguard Defenders, the NGO for the defense of human rights in Asia based in Spain, China would have opened police stations abroad and in particular in the European Union. Officially, these police stations assist Chinese nationals in their administrative procedures. But the objective, according to the NGO, would be above all to spy on and threaten dissidents who have found refuge abroad.
” At least 54 “Chinese clandestine police stations are scattered all over at least 30 countries around the world, says the report by the NGO Safeguard Defenders. The European Union would be particularly in the crosshairs of the clandestine agents, with about thirty antennas including eight in Spain, four in Italy, three based in France and in Portugal and one in Germany to mention only those.
Several countries take the NGO’s report very seriously and have already opened investigations. This is notably the case of the Netherlands and Spain, but not of Paris. Ireland has just closed a Chinese post which operated without any authorization on its soil, reports Heike Schmidtfrom the RFI international service.
The objective of these police stations would be to silence Chinese political opponents abroad, according to the NGO, but also an investigation by RTL Nieuws. The Dutch television channel quotes a Chinese dissident who has taken refuge in the Netherlands – he says he received threatening calls after demonstrating in front of the Chinese embassy.
Beijing rejects these accusations wholesale, calling them ” completely wrong ensuring that these police stations are there to assist Chinese nationals in their administrative procedures, for example to renew their driving license.
“We call it transnational Chinese repression”
According to Jing-Jie Chen, a researcher with the NGO Safeguard Defenders, some ” 230,000 Chinese nationals have already been returned to China through these operations » :
Officially, China claims that these police stations are used to assist Chinese nationals abroad to renew their driver’s license or produce birth certificates etc. But as we have demonstrated in the case of Madrid in Spain and Belgrade in Serbia, Chinese people are targeted and contacted by these police stations with the aim of bringing them back to China.
This is serious, since such actions violate the sovereignty of the countries in which these Chinese police operate. Officially, it is about expanding the fight against corruption and the fight against international crime beyond China’s borders. According to official documents, 230,000 Chinese nationals have already been returned to China through these operations.
But potentially, all overseas Chinese are in the crosshairs of the Chinese police. This does not only sow fear in the Chinese community. But it also makes the work of activists and dissidents in their host country very complicated. We call this transnational Chinese repression.
Jing-Jie CHEN, researcher at the NGO Safeguard Defenders
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