The communist dictatorship of China has now reportedly set up “overseas police service stations,” including in the United States, to monitor Chinese citizens living abroad. One such location is in New York City, and three in Toronto, Canada.
Fox News reports:
“These operations eschew official bilateral police and judicial cooperation and violate the international rule of law, and may violate the territorial integrity in third countries involved in setting up a parallel policing mechanism using illegal methods,” reads a report by Safeguard Defenders, a human rights watchdog, released earlier this month.
The report, titled “110 Overseas: Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild,” details China’s extensive efforts to combat “fraud” by its citizens living overseas, in part by opening several police stations on five continents that have assisted Chinese authorities in “carrying out policing operations on foreign soil.”
Europe is home to most of the police stations, with locations spread across the continent in places such as London, Amsterdam, Prague, Budapest, Athens, Paris, Madrid and Frankfurt. North America is also home to four of the stations, with three locations in Toronto and one in New York City. In all, there are 54 such stations in 30 different countries.
The report details how China has attempted to “combat the growing issue of fraud and telecommunication fraud by Chinese nationals living abroad,” running operations that have resulted in 230,000 Chinese nationals being “persuaded to return” to China “voluntarily” over the last year to face criminal prosecution.
“As these operations continue to develop, and new mechanisms are set up, it is evident that countries governed by the standards set by universal human rights and the rule of law urgently need to investigate these practices to identify the (local) actors at work, mitigate the risks and effectively protect the growing number of those targeted,” the report concludes.