Beijing has set up more than 100 so-called overseas police stations around the world to monitor, prosecute and sometimes repatriate exiled Chinese citizens, using bilateral security agreements with European and African countries to achieve a broad international presence, a new report claims. available exclusive to CNN.

The Madrid-based rights group Safeguard Defenders says it has found evidence that Beijing has a further 48 police stations abroad, after the NGO first revealed the existence of 54 more in September.

Her new report, Patrol and Convince, focuses on the scale of the network and examines the role of joint police initiatives that China has established with several European countries, including Italy, Croatia, Serbia and Romania, as a test program to expand China’s overseas departments are larger than was known before publication of information about the organization.

The NGO now claims, among other things, that the Chinese national was forced to repatriate by agents working undercover at a Chinese police station in a Paris suburb, having been recruited specifically for the purpose. Earlier, he reported that two other Chinese exiles were forcibly repatriated from Europe – one from Serbia, the other from Spain.

Who runs the police stations?

Safeguard Defenders, which has examined publicly available Chinese official documents for evidence of human rights abuses, said it had identified four different police jurisdictions under China’s Ministry of Public Security operating in at least 53 countries around the world, in theory to help Chinese expatriates from those countries. jurisdictions with their problems abroad.

Beijing denies the activities of undeclared police forces outside its territory, and China’s foreign ministry told CNN in November: “We hope that interested parties will stop inciting tension.

It is unacceptable to use this as an excuse to denigrate China.” Instead, China says the organizations are administrative centers set up to help Chinese expatriates with things like changing their driver’s licenses. China also said that these offices also emerged as a result of the pandemic, which has left many Chinese quarantined in other countries, traveling outside China and unable to update their documents.

Asked by CNN last month about the initial Safeguard Defenders allegations, China’s foreign ministry said the overseas units were staffed by volunteers. But a new report by the organization claims that one police network it investigated had 135 people working in its first 21 precincts.

The organization also concluded a three-year employment contract for an employee of the Chinese ward in Stockholm.

Unannounced consular activity outside of a country’s official diplomatic missions is highly unusual and illegal unless the host country has given its express consent. In addition, the Safeguard Defenders report states that some wards were established several years before the pandemic.

The information has so far led to investigations in at least 13 countries and fueled growing diplomatic tensions between China and countries such as Canada, which has a large Chinese diaspora.

China is not the only superpower to be accused of using extrajudicial methods to achieve policing or political persecution of citizens abroad.

Russia, for example, has twice been accused of using deadly chemical and radioactive agents on British soil to try to kill its former spies – allegations Russia has always denied.

In the USA, the CIA was involved in the “extraordinary transmission” scandal. [eufemism pentru extrădare extrajudiciară; ghilimelele îmi aparțin – n.trad.] terrorist suspects who were taken off the streets of Italy and taken to Guantanamo after the terrorist attacks of September 9, 2001.

But in China’s case, the allegations of widespread repression against Chinese citizens abroad come at a crucial time for the country, which is grappling with its own domestic turmoil as the population wears out its restrictive “zero COVID-19” strategy, even as Leader Xi Jinping begins his third term in power. China announced last week that it would ease some medical restrictions three years after the pandemic began.

As the world’s second-largest economy, China is developing ever-deepening relations with many countries where new police stations have reportedly been discovered, raising uncomfortable questions for their governments as they try to balance their interests, trade and national security.

China has signed police patrol agreements with other countries

Italy, whose governments have signed a series of bilateral agreements with China since 2015, has been largely silent on exposing apparent actions on its soil.

Between 2016 and 2018, Italian police carried out several joint patrols with Chinese police – first in Rome and Milan, later in other cities, including Naples, where Safeguard Defenders says it found evidence that a CCTV system had been installed in a populated area. district mainly by the Chinese, officially “to effectively curb crime there.”

In 2016, an Italian police official told NPR that joint policing “will lead to greater international cooperation, sharing of information and resources to combat criminal and terrorist groups that affect our countries.”

The NGO found 11 Chinese police stations in Italy, including in Venice and Prato, near Florence.

The opening ceremony of the new precinct in Rome in 2018 was attended by representatives of the Italian police, according to videos on Chinese websites, showing close ties between the two countries’ police forces.

This year, the Italian newspaper La Nazione wrote that a local investigation in one of the parishes did not reveal any illegal crimes. Il Foglio cited recent statements by police chiefs that the precincts were not a cause for concern as they appeared to fulfill a purely bureaucratic role.

Italy’s foreign and interior ministries did not respond to CNN’s questions.

China also signed joint patrol agreements with Croatia and Serbia in 2018-2019, pursuing its strategic interests in the region as part of Xi Jinping’s defining foreign policy, the Belt and Road Initiative.

According to Chinese media, the last time Chinese policemen were seen was in July, when they were patrolling the streets of the capital Zagreb together with their Croatian colleagues.

A police official in Zagreb told Xinhua that the patrols were necessary to “protect and attract foreign tourists”.

A Reuters story in 2019 reported that Chinese police, along with Serbian police, were patrolling Belgrade to control the influx of Chinese tourists. A Serbian policeman said that the Chinese did not have the authority to make arrests.

Safeguard Defenders also says that Chinese wards have also been able to gain a foothold in South Africa and neighboring countries under a similar agreement with Pretoria that has been in place for several years.

China began laying the groundwork for closer police cooperation with South Africa nearly two decades ago. Later, based on bilateral security agreements, it established a network officially called China Service Centers Abroad in cooperation with the South African government.

The Chinese consulate in Cape Town said the plan “brings together all communities in South Africa, both South Africans and foreigners”.

Since its inception, the body has “actively prevented crimes against the community and significantly reduced the number of cases,” the consulate said, noting that the centers are non-profit associations without “police powers.”

According to a 2019 article in the Jamestown China Brief, South African government officials have appeared frequently in Chinese media expressing support for the Centers and saying their work has helped police deepen relations with Chinese expatriates.

CNN has reached out to South African police, but has yet to hear back.

China is trying to repatriate people against their will

Safeguard Defenders stumbled across these networks of police stations while trying to assess the extent of China’s efforts to persuade some Chinese to return to China against their will. According to official Chinese data, since Xi has been in power, there may be nearly a quarter of a million people in the world.

“What we’re seeing from China is an increasing attempt to suppress dissent anywhere in the world, to threaten people, to harass people, to make them afraid to keep quiet or risk being repatriated to China against their will,” he said. . Safeguard Defenders Campaign Director Laura Hart.

“Usually everything starts with phone calls.

They can start intimidating your relatives in China, threaten you, do almost anything to force foreign targets back into the country. If that doesn’t work, they’ll bring in undercover agents overseas. They will send them from Beijing and use methods like baiting and staging,” Hart said.

France’s interior ministry has refused to respond to allegations that a Chinese police station in a Paris suburb forced a Chinese national back into the country.

The information causes outrage and questions

The revelation caused loud indignation in some countries and suspicious silence in others.

FBI Director Christopher Wray told a Homeland Security committee last month that he was deeply troubled by the revelations. “It is outrageous to think that the Chinese police would try to open an office in, for example, New York, without legal coordination. It violates sovereignty and bypasses judicial norms and police cooperation procedures,” he said.

Ireland closed a Chinese police station discovered on its territory, and the Netherlands, which took similar measures, is under investigation, as is Spain.

Hart told CNN that her organization is likely to identify more suspects. “This is the tip of the iceberg,” she said.

“China does not hide what it is doing. They are deliberately saying that they will expand these operations, so we have to take it seriously.”

“This is the time when countries must realize that it is about respecting the rule of law and human rights in their countries [sic!]both for the people of China and for everyone else in the world,” she said.

The material was made with the support of the Rador agency