Chinese government intensifies extrajudicial mechanisms to rapidly expand web of relentless – and often illegal - policing operations around the globe, rights group claims

Cross posted from: feddit.de/post/11142335

Here is the report (pdf).

In 2014, the People’s Republic of China launched so-called Operation ‘Fox Hunt’, a year later followed ‘Operation Sky Net’. Often under the pretext of fighting corruption and punishing criminal activities, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used an extensive global network of illegal police stations to pursue dissidents, human rights laywers and activists, and forcibly bring them back to China in grave and systematic violations of human rights.

Topped by the method of persuade to return - a combination of pressure techniques employed on family members and loved ones in China, including collective punishment, as well as direct stalking, harassment and threats delivered to the target abroad by Chinese agents - a new report by Safeguard Defenders, a human rights groups focused on China, lists forced returns from over 120 countries and regions between 2014 and 2023.

The report also describes the various instances of mass handovers as well as mass persuasion, e.g., the mass persuasion of 230,000 individuals to return between April 2021 and July 2022, and the mass handover (e.g., repatriation) of 77 individuals from Fiji in 2017, 6 from Vanuatu in 2019, 88 from Indonesia, 164 from Laos in 2023, as well as over 30,000 individuals from Myanmar between September and December 2023 alone. The handovers in cooperation with counterparts in host countries are particularly relevant as China is still expanding its global policing and judicial cooperation footprint.

Safeguard Defenders also criticizes the “incredibly worrisome” role of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) which closely cooperate with a Chinese Communist Party-agency in the persuasion of dissident.

“A vital part of China’s long-arm policing efforts rest on the cooperation many authorities around the world continue to afford the Chinese authorities,” Safeguard Defenders says.

“While some [governments] have woken up to the dire reality of the CCP’s global fugitive hunt, others tacitly close an eye to or willingly assist in their unlawful operations under a recent swathe of - often secretive - police cooperation agreements,” the group adds.