Canadian police on Thursday said they are investigating reports that China has set up illegal police stations in the country and harassed Chinese living in Canada.
Several local media, citing Spain-based human rights group Safeguard Defenders, this week reported that police posts in a residential home, a single-story commercial building and a convenience store in the Toronto area are among 54 worldwide.
However, China denied the accusations of illegal activity, saying the locations simply offer services — such as driver’s license renewals — to Chinese living abroad who cannot return to China amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo: AFP
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said it was “investigating reports of criminal activity in relation to the so-called ‘police’ stations.”
“The RCMP takes threats to the security of individuals living in Canada very seriously and is aware that foreign states may seek to intimidate or harm communities or individuals within Canada,” it added.
The Netherlands has launched a similar probe.
Photo: REUTERS
Safeguard Defenders last month said in a report that the police stations have been used by Chinese police to carry out policing operations on foreign soil, and pressure Chinese nationals to return to China to face criminal charges.
The group said the stations “serve a far more sinister and wholly illegal purpose” than Beijing has acknowledged, including tracking and pursuing targets.
It said a total 230,000 Chinese nationals were returned to China, mostly from countries in Asia, through these methods, which included “threats and harassment to family members back home or directly to the target abroad,” between April last year and July.
A recently unsealed indictment in the US in a case of foreign interference against seven Chinese nationals described an example of a person accused of embezzlement and living in Canada who was in 2018 pressed into returning to China, and eventually went “despite initially not wanting to go back.”
The Chinese government allegedly coordinated some of the US operation from Toronto, the indictment said.
Canada’s public broadcaster said a journalist and rights advocate who moved to Canada from China in 1989 claimed to have been repeatedly targeted by Chinese officials online.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa said the offices are staffed by “local volunteers, and not Chinese police officers,” who assist with eye exams for people’s driver’s license renewal.
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