how Beijing pursues its opponents in France

Surveillance, pressure, repatriations… “Special Envoy” investigated the presence in France of Chinese police officers tracking down nationals considered threats by Beijing. The France 2 magazine reveals that these activities will continue in 2024, while Paris has asked the Chinese authorities to put an end to them in 2022. For this report broadcast Thursday May 2, the journalists met and followed Ling Huazhan, 26 years old. , from his summons to a premises serving as a police station, outside of any consular framework, to his transfer to Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport with the aim of repatriating him to China. Methods that are similar to “law enforcement operations on foreign soil”, according to Safeguard Defenders, an NGO based in Spain.

Ling Huazhan, a Chinese opponent based in France, was a victim of the activities carried out by one of these clandestine branches. Since the publication of a video on YouTube, the man has been seen as an enemy of the regime. In this content viewed by 80 people, we see him slashing portraits of the founder of the Chinese regime, Mao Zedong, and the current president, Xi Jinping, in a bathroom. Ling Huazhan demands the independence of Taiwan and Hong Kong, and denounces the policy of repression carried out by the Chinese Communist Party against the Uyghur Muslim minority.

“They told me they would find me no matter what.”

This video led to him being summoned to a building identified by the French authorities as a clandestine Chinese police station. “They told me that they had contacts all over France, that they would find me whatever happenedhe explains on camera. I think I’m going to be arrested and sent back to China.” After this meeting, Ling Huazhan was escorted by members of a Franco-Chinese friendship association to Roissy airport, from where he was supposed to take a flight to his native country. After escaping this repatriation, he received dozens of threatening calls and text messages against him and his family.

Ling Huazhan’s case is not isolated. The NGO Safeguard Defenders accuses Beijing of carrying out illegal police operations in several dozen countries. In 2022, the organization had identified 110 branches around the world, including four in France: two in Paris, one in Aubervilliers and another in Noisy-le-Grand, in the suburbs of the capital. According to a report published in 2022 by the NGO, China has, since 2014, repatriated some 10,000 nationals to its territory, thanks to its archipelago of clandestine police stations around the world. As stated The cross At the time, this repression targeted a wide variety of groups: religious minorities such as the Uighurs, Tibetans, political dissidents, human rights activists, etc.

Branches in the United States and the United Kingdom

Questioned in December 2022 in the Senate on this subject, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, assured parliamentarians that he had asked the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) “to step up its intelligence investigation”. “I want to reassure you, France will never accept this type of practice, which remains to be confirmed, with regard to the four French posts mentioned by this NGO”he added.

The presence of such antennas was made public in the United States, where the FBI arrested in April 2023 two people suspected of carrying out police activities in New York, from an office building, according to the New York Times. Two months later, the United Kingdom announced that Beijing had closed its branches on British territory, while claiming that an investigation had not revealed any illegal activity, according to the Guardian. But China has always denied the existence of these clandestine police stations. According to Beijing, branches do exist, but only to allow Chinese nationals to carry out certain administrative tasks.