Last April, the FBI arrested two men for running an undercover police operation in New York on behalf of Chinese authorities. Both were accused of using community center facilities in Chinatown to direct unofficial police station from that country. A year earlier, the human rights organization Safeguard Defenders had drawn attention to these posts, which it accused the Chinese Communist Party of harassing dissidents overseas and participating in operations to “persuade them to return”.
Laura Harth, the organization’s director of campaigns, later stated that these unofficial police stations, which allegedly hide behind the fact that they are a voluntary service helping Chinese citizens abroad, “are only the tip of the iceberg in a much wider campaign of transnational repression.” ” According to their data, there are at least a hundred such stations in 53 countries, including the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada, which have opened investigations into this matter.
Now, Britain’s Secretary for State Security Tom Tugendhat confirmed in a written statement to lawmakers that the investigation did not reveal any illegal activity by the Chinese state at these sites and that, however, China “has closed police stations” in the UK. land, after the Government indicated that their whereabouts reports were “very worrying» and that any intimidation in the UK of foreign nationals by China or any other state is «unacceptable».
“I can confirm that, to date, no evidence of illegal activity on behalf of the Chinese state has been identified at the sites,” said Tugendhat, adding that they concluded that “public and police surveillance has a depressing impact on the management of what functions even. that these sites may have.
flat ban
The Chinese government defended at the time that there were centers outside of China run by volunteers, not by the police, whose goal was to help Asian giants settle. administrative issues how to update documents or get other types of assistance, and now, the Chinese Embassy in London has stated, after studying the foreign minister’s statement, that allegations that his government has police stations in Great Britain are “a complete political lie.”
However, Tugendhat detailed in his letter that “The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has informed the Chinese Embassy that any functioning related to such police service offices in the UK is unacceptable and they must not operate in any way”, and noted that “the Chinese Embassy later replied that all the stations were permanently closed.” “Further allegations will be immediately investigated in accordance with UK law,” the politician warned.
The Chinese government at the time defended that there were centers outside of China that were run by volunteers, not by the police
“The so-called ‘overseas police posts’ simply don’t exist,” an embassy spokesman said in a statement reported by ‘The Guardian’ newspaper. “The Chinese government urges the British government to stop spreading false informationto stop excessive broadcasting and slander,” the spokesperson said.
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