China extends power struggle to establishing illegal police stations around the world: report

Beijing: The Chinese government has opened several illegal police stations in various parts of the world. A recent report said such establishments are present in developed nations like Canada and Ireland as well.

The presence of these illegal and informal police service stations has triggered concerns because their goal is to antagonise China's adversaries. The Fuzhou (a city in China) police said it has 30 such stations in 21 countries including Ukraine, France, Spain, Germany, and the UK. Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Nigeria, Tanzania, Lesotho, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Cambodia, Brunei, and Japan are also on the list.

Investigative Journalism Reportika said in Canada, these stations are affiliated with the Public Security Bureau (PSB). According to local media, at least three of them are close to the Greater Toronto Area. The report further said the Chinese government is influencing elections in certain nations using these illegal police stations.

The report has concerned human rights campaigners because the affected nations are among those frequently questioning China's declining human rights records. Human rights campaigners have been accusing the ruling Communist Party of China of abuse in the name of security, reported ANI.

The Chinese government is known for running internment camps, separating people from their families, and carrying out forced sterilisation. The authorities have been calling these camps vocational skills training centres.

Two weeks ago, a report by Safeguard Defenders said China is running 54 overseas police service centres to carry out transnational policing operations. These establishments are accused of using threats and "persuasion" techniques to get overseas critics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to bring them back to China. These techniques include taking family members hostage, making it hard to find jobs, and making it tough for children to attend school.

Initially set up to help Chinese nationals overseas with administrative tasks, they are now revealed to have "more sinister and wholly illegal" purposes. The report further said some official anecdotes of official operations explicitly cite the active involvement of Hometown Associations on the ground in tracking and pursuing targets indicated by police or public prosecutors in China.

Through these methods, 230,000 Chinese nationals were returned to the mainland to face potential criminal charges. The programme also urges people who travel to the nine "forbidden" countries - Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Malaysia, Turkey, and Indonesia - to return to China as soon as possible.

The pilot programme "persuaded" 54,000 people to return from Myanmar between January-September 2021. The Chinese state media reported that overseas police service stations actively assisted Chinese police in "persuasion to return", said the report.