11/01/2022

Security News This Week

China operates secret ‘police stations’ in other countries

Officials in Canada and the Netherlands are investigating allegations that Chinese police forces have operated a network of illegal police stations within their countries. According to reports that emerged this week, Chinese police forces have been operating out of clandestine bases and using their presence to track and threaten dissidents. The Dutch government has called such sites “illegal” and said it is “investigating exactly what they are doing here,” while officials in Canada said they are investigating "so-called police stations."

However, it is just the tip of the iceberg. Spanish civil rights group Safeguard Defenders first claimed that Chinese police forces from the cities of Fuzhou and Qingtian were running “overseas police service stations” across the West in a report published in September.

Since 2018, the group claims, more than 38 police service stations have appeared in “dozens of countries” spread across five different continents. “Such overseas police ‘service stations’ have been used by police back in China to carry out such ‘persuasion to return’ operations on foreign soil, including in Europe,” the report states. Lawmakers in both England and Scotland are also planning on investigating the stations, reports say.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Guardian.