The Decibel - The secretive Chinese ‘police stations’ in Canada

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

The RCMP are now investigating after a report from human rights organization Safeguard Defenders identified 54 so-called Chinese police “service stations” set up in 30 countries around the world ��� including three right here in Canada.China says the stations are set up to assist Chinese nationals with things like renewing drivers’ licences. But Laura Harth, the campaign director for Safeguard Defenders, says the stations are part of an effort by the Chinese government to make Chinese people return that includes surveillance, intimidation tactics and harassing family back home.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Hi, I'm Mainika Raman-Wellms, and you're listening to The Decibel. At first glance, there was no indication that they were at all like any sort of police station I know. That's The Globe's Irene Gallia. She was following up on some startling allegations that recently surfaced. The first was a residential house in a suburban neighborhood. Quite a nice house, a car out in the driveway. I knocked on the door and a man answered. I saw his wife in the background vacuuming.

And I asked if he owned the house. He said he did. I asked if he'd ever heard of this police organization. He said he hadn't. No otherwise, no indication of association with the police body outside the house. He asked, why are you asking me this? Why do you want to know if I've ever heard of this police organization? And I had to say, you know, your address was on a list, a report.

According to research from a human rights group called Safeguard Defenders, this is one of three Canadian locations of a worldwide network of what they call overseas Chinese police service stations. The second address was in a business park, kind of by a highway, very nondescript, plain looking building. It did have a small sign showing that it had been rented out to a Chinese non-for-profit community group. I knocked on the door again and asked if the person there had ever heard of this police organization. Again, she said she was just renting the space, and no, she'd never heard of it. And the third was a convenience store in a strip mall in Scarborough, mainly occupied by Chinese businesses. And I walked in and asked if the cashier there had ever heard of the organization and if he knew

who owned the building, and he had no idea. Today on the show, campaign director Laura Harth explains how safeguard defenders found out that these stations are used to surveil and intimidate Chinese citizens abroad. This is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Laura, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. So Safeguard Defenders released a report in September that's been getting a lot of international attention now. And that's because in your report, you say that China has set up 54 police service stations in various countries overseas, including three here in Canada, all in the Toronto area. What exactly are these service stations? So the first thing to clarify is that

it is at least 54 police service stations because we have indications that there are more. And I think this is important to highlight. On the surface of it, their first tasks are kind of helping the overseas Chinese communities with what would traditionally be consular tasks, such as the renewal of passports, driver's licenses. That is not as innocent as it looks. But obviously, it's also blatantly illegal because these stations were not authorized, did not seek authorization from the government of the host countries where they set these stations up. But there are far more sinister goals that the authorities specifically claim these stations have. One is kind of monitoring the public opinion, the sentiments in those overseas Chinese communities, which is obviously something dissidents and other exiled groups have long been warning about, but have not been heard in a way. And then these go further because among their tasks are also those of resolutely cracking down on crime

and aiding, assisting the public security services back in China with the pursuit of fugitives. How exactly did safeguard defenders go about this research and finding out about these overseas stations? We have been tracking China's so-called persuasion to return methodology for quite a while as part of their transnational repression efforts. Everything that we published is exclusively based on sources of the Chinese authorities themselves or local media reporting inside China. So that was the exclusive basis for what we put out in the report. And according to accounts by the Chinese authorities themselves, the National Ministry of Public Security in August said that between April 2021 and July of this year alone, they have successfully persuaded to return 230,000 individuals. And so

the stations are involved in these operations. And that is not something that Safeguard Defender states. That is something that the authorities back in China officially state on their platforms and in their local media. So this is stuff that the Chinese Ministry of Public Security was actually putting out themselves. They were making this public. Yes, yes. So they are making these kind of things public. We know that what they make public is partial, but they're actually pretty open about what they are doing. Also, the methodologies used, they publish those. There's an official legal interpretation from 2018, for example, in which they say that to have targets returned, if no other means are available, kidnapping is a legitimate means, which is why it is so shocking

that it is taking a lot of governments so long to kind of catch up to this and to take this serious, especially when members of targeted communities try to report this to authorities and often feel unheard. Laura, do we know how long have these stations actually been in operation for? So we believe the first ones were set up in 2018. Xi Jinping recently secured an unprecedented third term as leader of the Communist Party of China. So how do these overseas stations, I guess, fit into his vision of China? In a speech to the National Congress about two weeks ago, he was very clear on a couple of issues, right?

One is national security above everything else. So above the economy, which I think surprised some people, not, I would say, the human rights community, but it's obviously been received with concern, for example, from the business community. Again, national security, as we know, we need to understand it. So that means the security of the party and its leadership at the core above everything else. That heavy emphasis combined with an emphasis on really the overseas Chinese community, on bringing the overseas Chinese community in and making sure that they kind of enhance those efforts, enhance propaganda efforts, enhance influence operations.

And so also enhance control, crack down on dissent where that may be present. I think those are the things we have seen already over the past decade and things that we will increasingly be seeing unless it is stopped in some way. I think the stations are really the latest iteration in a growing and brazen campaign of repression both inside China and increasingly outside China. And so we really hope that this issue of transnational repression will finally be tackled by governments everywhere. The Globe got a statement from the Chinese embassy

which denied that police stations are set up in Canada. But they did say that these service stations are set up to help citizens with paperwork, like renewing driver's licenses. So just help me understand, why is this a cause of concern here? So the first point is that in any case, these are illegal. And many countries have already stated so, because obviously even providing consular services, there are international treaties governing those kind of practices, protecting territorial sovereignty of the host country. So China should have like a consulate in Canada that deals with that kind of thing then instead of something like this. Is that right? Exactly. So they have a consulate, actually. And the interesting thing, if you look at certain countries, for example, Frankfurt, so they set up such a station also in Frankfurt, which is actually home to the biggest Chinese consulate in Europe. So there is no clear need for this to be happening, other than kind of giving these people, these networks,

I think, more legitimization, more power within those communities. And so to better monitor, to police those communities in a way. So it really points to setting up a bit of a state within a state. What did your organization actually find about what's actually happening at these locations? So on the one hand, they are indeed assisting and helping people in renewing their driver's licenses, passports and so on. Now, this is not as innocent as it looks because we know, for example, when it comes to dissidents, when it comes to people that have fled from religious and ethnic minorities, such as Uyghurs, Tibetans, Southern Mongolians, activists, that even the renewal of a passport may be a pressure point for people. So refusing, for example, to renew a passport unless that person goes back to China

is a very effective way to try to persuade people to go back. So in tracking those people, educate them, those are the words that they use, kind of bring them in to those locations or alternative locations for video meetings with the Public Security Bureau back home, who may be harassing, detaining, threatening, intimidating family members of that target back home. Are these individuals that are facing charges in China? Are they criminals, according to China? Yes. So according to China, these are all fugitives. These are all criminals. Now, we are not contesting that among these people, some may have committed crimes. We are not in the capacity to verify that, obviously. What we are sure of, and again,

also by accounts from the Chinese authorities themselves, that among these 230,000 individuals, definitely not all were even charged. Okay, so if China didn't extradite these 230,000 people, like, how do they make them come back? Among the tactics used to persuade people to return, the most popular one is definitely the one of harassing, threatening family members back in China, arrests even family members, detain them. There are even instances where family members are prosecuted instead of the target that they want to return. There's an interesting statement from a former Foxhunt director. So these national international policing campaigns who said a fugitive is like a kite. You can always get to them through their family. And so that is a national policy that is kind of a doctrine that we now see used also by these local public security bureaus. And so family members, I mean,

in the worst case scenarios, they will be detained, arrested, prosecuted. At a lower level, they will be threatened and harassed. Their kids might be banned from going to certain schools. Their social benefits might be taken away. Those kind of practices may also target a wider community. So for example, community leaders from a particular town that person is from, houses may be spray painted really to like shame and blame the person, to publicly call them out in front of their community. And so all those tactics, and I think it's very recognizable for any of us, if they would go after your family, that is a very effective tool to get you to come back. We'll be right back after this message.

This may seem like a bit of a basic question, but why does China want to persuade people to return? Why do they want people to come back? So one thing we've monitored is how the number of people fleeing China, leaving China, is growing at an incredible rate since Xi Jinping came to power. And this is happening notwithstanding the difficulties, especially in the past years during the pandemic, to leave China. Now, these are also people that are potentially a risk to the Chinese Communist Party in the sense of what they conceive as their national security, right? So telling the China story well, speaking well of the Chinese Communist Party, kind of promoting that propaganda, these people are a potential risk to that happening, to that national security, to that stability.

It is our impression that these two things are related, that the number, the staggering growth in number of people trying to leave China, managing to leave China, but also I think the general praxis and theory of Xi Jinping over these past years, I mean, the People's Republic of China was never a democracy. The Chinese Communist Party has been committing atrocities since it got to power over 70 years ago. But under Xi Jinping, we have definitely seen that growth again, both in domestic repression, as well as in growingly transnational repression. So the two really seem very much related. And persuading people to come back, forcing

things to come back, makes it easier to make them disappear, arrest them, prosecute them. In the Canadian context, a Canadian member of parliament, Michael Chong, has spoken out about this and has said that the stations in Canada are an intrusion of Canadian sovereignty. And in your report, you go as far as to say that these stations are illegal, as you said today as well. Can you just spell this out? What exactly are the laws that are allegedly being broken here? Well, obviously, when it comes to, for example, judicial cooperation, police cooperation, there are official mechanisms

that need to be followed. The host country is the one always maintaining jurisdiction, if you will, sovereignty. So they will be leading any of those operations. When you set up these kind of clandestine stations without declaring them, those are clear violations of the territorial sovereignty of any other country where you're doing this. Added to that, the kind of operations they're running, so these policing operations, are in blatant violation of universal human rights, of the constitutional rights and freedoms guaranteed by Canada's constitution, of international treaties on extradition, and so on. So there's a whole series of laws that are being blatantly violated. So to be clear, other countries wouldn't do this. Other countries, like we talk about extradition treaties, right?

That's kind of the process you would go through to have a criminal brought back home then. So this is a very unique situation. I think this is a pretty unique situation. I don't think we've come across any other countries that we know of that have gone as far, that are as brazen as the People's Republic of China, to actually set up stations to actually hire people, and then to even brag about it in Chinese, but still to brag about it, to boast about it on their own platforms. And if you let China get away with it, the risk is that others will increasingly follow that example. I mean, governments are starting to pay attention and are starting to investigate. The RCMP here in Canada recently said it is investigating the

three service stations in the Toronto area. What about other countries? What are other countries doing on this front? So we're seeing a growing number of responses, also thanks to the media, global media attention, obviously. So just over the weekend, Austria's interior ministry announced that it is investigating the police service centers, saying that under no circumstance will we tolerate illegal activities by foreign intelligence services or police authorities. Canada indeed is investigating. As you said, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands clearly stated that these stations are illegal. Ireland ordered the station to shut down. We obviously hope that all these countries will share the information among them

so that these investigations can run as quickly as possible and as effective as possible. Laura, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Thank you so much for having me. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Kasia Mihailovic is our senior producer,

and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.