Savannah Hulsey Pointer, FISM News
China has erected hundreds of “overseas police service stations” around the world, including three in Toronto and one in New York City to keep tabs on its nationals living abroad.
“These operations eschew official bilateral police and judicial cooperation and violate the international rule of law, and may violate the territorial integrity in third countries involved in setting up a parallel policing mechanism using illegal methods,” reads a report by Safeguard Defenders, a human rights watchdog, released earlier this month.
The group’s report, titled “110 Overseas: Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild,” outlined China’s expansive efforts to track the activity of its citizens living overseas by opening several police stations on five continents.
The nation asserts these stations were created with the purpose of tracking Chinese citizens’ potential “fraud” activities while overseas, and the Chinese government claims the stations have assisted Chinese authorities in “carrying out policing operations on foreign soil.”
The majority of police stations are found in Europe, with locations in cities including London, Amsterdam, Prague, Budapest, Athens, Paris, Madrid, and Frankfurt. Four of the stations are also located in North America, with three in Toronto and one in New York City. There are 54 such stations altogether spread throughout 30 different nations, according to The New York Post.
In order to “combat the growing issue of fraud and telecommunication fraud by Chinese nationals living abroad,” the report describes how China has conducted operations that have led to 230,000 Chinese nationals being “persuaded to return” to China “voluntarily” over the past year in order to face criminal prosecution.
According to a report by PBS, Laura Harth, a campaign director for the organization, “One of the aims of these campaigns, obviously, as it is to crack down on dissent, is to silence people,” Harth said. “So people are afraid. People that are being targeted, that have family members back in China, are afraid to speak out.”
Mao Ning, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said Thursday that Beijing isn’t in the wrong with their stations: “Chinese public security authorities strictly observe the international law and fully respect the judicial sovereignty of other countries,” Mao said.
The Dutch government said it was investigating whether two such stations were established in the Netherlands, one a virtual office in Amsterdam and the other at a physical address in Rotterdam.
“We are investigating the activities of these so-called police centers. Once there is more clarity on the matter, we will decide on appropriate action,” the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement reported by PBS. “We have not been informed about these centers via diplomatic channels.”
According to American Military News, these operations by Chinese police in the United States are called ‘Fox Hunt’ operations.
Finding any family members of a target still present in China and threatening to detain them if they do not return “voluntarily” is a popular tactic used by the Fox Hunt operations.
In one instance reported by CNN, China sent a fugitive’s elderly father to America to coerce him into going home.
“Rapidly emerging evidence points to extensive online campaigns and the use of ‘Overseas Police Service Stations’ being used in these operations on five continents, often using local ‘Chinese Overseas Home Associations’ linked to the [Chinese Communist Party’s] United Front Work,” the Safeguard Defenders report stated.
“These operations eschew official bilateral police and judicial cooperation and violate the international rule of law, and may violate the territorial integrity of third countries involved in setting up a parallel policing mechanism using illegal methods.”