54 global Chinese outposts face Human Rights scrutiny

By Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

#China, October 28, 2022 – There are at least 54 Chinese “police station” outposts in countries around the world in a long arm tactic to extradite Chinese national according to a damning report by Safeguard Defenders, a human rights organization.

In the report labeled “110 Overseas Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild” the organization alleges that Chinese Police and the Overseas Association of Chinese, run by entities of the Chinese Communist Party, has established a series of overseas police “service stations”, in particular in Europe.

It found that Chinese nationals who had fled the country were “persuaded” to return by workers at these “service stations” who were working directly with police in China. The persuasion reportedly included veiled threats against family members back in China and denying their children in China education.

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals have been quietly ‘persuaded’ between April 2021 and July 2022 alone.  Safeguard defenders said they believed they were not strictly physical buildings but a network of individuals.

Since the report, published in September, which directly named stations in Spain and Belgrade;  Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands have also begun independent investigations with concerning results, all three countries have discovered some form of the service stations which, violating the rules of international diplomacy, were not declared to the respective governments before they were set up.

The Fuzhou Police Service Overseas Station opened earlier this year in Ireland and has been ordered closed. The BBC reports that the Irish department of foreign affairs said no Chinese authority had asked permission to set up the station.

At least two of the illegal stations have been discovered in the Netherlands and declared illegal by the Dutch government.

Three were listed in Canada.  CBC news says the alleged stations   have been found and include a residential home and single-storey commercial building in Markham and a convenience store in Scarborough, police are investigating and describe the alleged setups as “entirely illegal”.

Countries with these police stations set up in them according to the human rights group include the Netherlands, The United Kingdom; Portugal; Hungary; Italy; France; Greece; The United States; Brazil; Argentina; Chile; Ecuador; Japan; Mongolia; Nigeria; Lesotho; Cambodia; Sweden; Austria; Ukraine; Slovakia and Germany.