China abducted and forcibly returned its own citizens from EU territory, report finds
Human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders first revealed in 2022 that China operates more than 120 illegal police offices in 53 countries around the world, including around 50 in the EU.
These offices were tasked with monitoring Chinese citizens, sparking fears activists could be tracked and harrasssed as part of a crackdown on dissent. Beijing claimed the centres were designed to allow their nationals to access administrative services.
Now, Safeguard Defenders has produced a 165-page report detailing how the Chinese communist regime has also been abducting its own citizens on EU territory before forcing them back to China.
A secret mission
Laura Harth, one of the report's authors, told Euronews that the abductions ae part of "covert police operations" where agents are being sent abroad on specific missions.
"Indeed, the official methodology involves kidnapping," Harth said. "Citizens are persuaded to return to where their family members are, otherwise, they use collective punishment. They are deprived of their pensions, they are arrested."
The report details Chinese 'repatriation operations' over the past ten years, which have bypassed the traditional legal route recognised by law, i.e. the international extradition procedure.
Ten years ago, China launched one of its most notorious campaigns to date, Operation Fox Hunt (2014), soon followed by the comprehensive Operation Sky Net (2015), a global extension of Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign.
"We see that this is the official policy of the People's Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party," Harth explained. "And I think it's very scary that they feel they can openly enter European territory and different areas of the world. We have documented nearly 300 cases and nearly 60 countries where this has happened. The fact that they feel that they can come into our territory and carry out these illegal law enforcement operations wherever they want is really quite frightening."
Ten EU countries concerned
Official Chinese figures show 12,000 repatriation cases from more than 120 countries as a result of the two main repatriation campaigns. These are often touted by Beijing as a major success.
It is not clear exactly how much of this is propaganda and how much is real data. To give a sense of the scale, a few years ago China managed to persuade 230,000 people to return to China in just one year as part of a special campaign in which the threat of collective punishment was also used as a means of persuasion.
Safeguard Defenders' report is based on 283 accounts of Chinese indiciduals who were repatriated or extradited. The report includes a table detailing who was returned to China, how they were returned, and reports on failed attempts.
Of the 283 cases, 27 concern an EU Member State, including Bulgaria (1 case), Cyprus (2), Czech Republic (1), France (5), Germany (1), Greece (1), Italy (9), Poland (1), Romania (1), Spain (5).
"It happens every day, all over the world. And unfortunately Europe, I feel, has yet to wake up to this threat that these communities face every day," Harth said.
The targets of the campaign are often dissidents critical of the Chinese regime.
Despite the 2022 revelations of clandestine Chinese police officers operating abroad involving several EU member states, there was no common EU response.
According to the NGO, by washing their hands of the issue, Western governments have isolated Chinese communities and played into Xi's hands.
Worrying developments in Hungary
Safeguard Defenders also criticise plans for Hungarian and Chinese police to patrol together in Hungary, as is currently happening in Croatia and was previously the case in Italy before the illegal police stations were exposed.
"If I am targeted and I see local police officers interacting with Chinese colleagues, I will not feel safe, I will not report what is happening to me. I will not talk about the fact that I feel threatened, that my family is being harassed. And of course I will not criticise the Chinese Communist Party," explains Laura Harth.
Another mounting concern is the access provided to Chinese police to move within the Schengen area. On their days off, they can travel wherever they want within the area, without control. "Who knows what secret mandate they are carrying out?", Harth questioned.
The Chinese police presence was recently addressed by the European Parliament.
Mathieu Michel, Belgian Deputy Prime Minister, also weighed in on the issue, saying: "China is pushing and sometimes successfully deploying police forces, they are surrounding interior ministries, but this has to be stopped, it has to be banned, it is a hybrid threat, we cannot tolerate it."
Euronews reached out to the Chinese Embassy to the EU for a statement regarding the issue of illegal Chinese repatriations. This article will be updated if we receive a reply.
