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China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds

For at least ten years, the Chinese Communist Party has been abducting its overseas citizens on EU territory and forcibly returning them to China - violating the rule of law and public security in Europe - a new report finds.

Full report: https://safeguarddefenders.com/sites/default/files/pdf/Chasing%20Fox%20Hunt.pdf

Archived version: https://archive.ph/lEYCn

EDIT: The discussion shifted to off-topic and insults. Post locked.

D61 ,

Report by "Safeguard Defenders" formerly "China Action"... website here if you want to see a bunch of "HOLY SHIT CHINA BAD" stuff....

Human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders first revealed in 2022 that China operates more than 120 illegal police offices in 53 countries around the world, including around 50 in the EU.

Wasn't this deemed super false? Those "police offices" were just outreach centers for Chinese nationals needing help filling out paperwork or being tracked down to remind them to fill out paperwork?

China in just one year as part of a special campaign in which the threat of collective punishment was also used as a means of persuasion.

Nowhere in the article does it source any of these claims. Doesn't even link to the "report"

...Chinese indiciduals who...

heheh... misspelled "individuals"...

From the Safeguard Defenders website where the .pdf for the report is located. The first two sentences reframes things differently from the EuroNews linked article.

Just around Christmas last year, China’s global hunt for “fugitives” hit a new milestone. Since its launch in 2014 as part of Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, 10,000 are claimed to have been successfully returned from over 120 countries around the globe under Sky Net (and junior partner Fox Hunt) operations....

Its not JUST Chinese citizens, its people that that the Chinese government is claiming have broken the law and fled the country.

Also... the EuroNews article says the report is 169 pages long, the .pdf from Safeguard Defenders is only 69 pages long.

I mean... sure, if you want to make an argument about how the Chinese government may or may not be following extradition treaties/laws to have people accused of criminal activity brought back to the country to stand trial, you can make that argument. Framing it as "Chinese government kidnaps citizens traveling abroad!!!!" is wildly inaccurate.

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

You are linking the wrong report.

The article mentions the new report, found here.

420blazeit69 ,

Pg. 18:

Ye is the former mayor of Chuanliao Town Government in Qingtian County, Zhejiang. Accused of bribery, he fled to Milan, Italy, in July 2001.

In December 2014, the Zhejiang Public Security Department and the Protectorate sent a joint working group to Italy and Spain to carry out persuade to return operations of fugitives from the Lishui and Wenzhou areas.

After being persuaded face-to-face by the working group, Ye flew back to China with the working group to surrender himself on December 23, 2014.

Nothing alleged here is remotely objectionable.

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

That's the quote from the linked article in footnote 19, not allegation, read below.

420blazeit69 ,

...what?

I'm referencing the actual report you just linked to. I quoted a section of the report that provides an example of the conduct it criticizes. It's nothing; the report is bullshit.

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

You quoted the section of the report that quotes the linked articles. Apart from the transcript font used, it also links to the footnote.

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/a9b93da3-8e53-4f54-bceb-64b5a0c67140.webp

420blazeit69 ,

And? A footnote does not change the fact that the report is bullshit.

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

I quoted a section of the report that provides an example of the conduct it criticizes.

You didn't. You quoted the official statement of the Chinese government, which was quoted in the report. It was not an example provided by the report authors. Their examples and argument is below the quoted section. I'm not sure if you are just misunderstanding or pretending to misunderstand. But in any case, you are welcome to your opinion that the report is "bullshit". But that is not a good argument if you want to bring someone to your way of thinking. You need more objective details for that.

rottingleaf ,

Its not JUST Chinese citizens, its people that that the Chinese government is claiming have broken the law and fled the country.

Which doesn't mean anything since they are not in China and such an act would be, as the title says, abduction. Which is a crime and a violation of sovereignty.

booty ,
@booty@hexbear.net avatar

As of 2022, there were approximately 1.2 million victims of US government abduction being held on US soil. Just to put things into perspective.

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

Source? From my experience, US goes in the opposite direction. They keep inventing new reasons to kick people out. Their Title 42 is a perfect example of how they circumvent their Title 8 protections.

booty ,
@booty@hexbear.net avatar

Source?

https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/prisoners-2022-statistical-tables

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

Well, you and I use a different definition of abduction. While I'll give you that some of those people are probably imprisoned wrongly, the majority are there because of their own actions. I wouldn't fault China imprisoning someone for breaking their laws (even if I disagree with the law), I also don't fault US for imprisoning people for breaking their laws. Treatment of those prisoners is a different question altogether.

booty ,
@booty@hexbear.net avatar

Here's the definition I use, it's quite common

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

Now compare that to imprisonment. One is legal action, another is illegal action. One can argue about the morality of that, but the distinction is clear.

GarbageShoot ,

Your definition of abduction apparently includes persuading people to go somewhere, so I think there are many lacks in terms of definitions here.

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

Asking under a threat of harm is no longer called persuasion, it's a crime.

GarbageShoot ,

The link 404s for me, so I can't really look at the details, but more information would be required to establish it as actually being criminal. Saying, and I'm just producing an arbitrary example, "Come here to attend a court case or you will be tried in abstentia (and therefore probably found guilty), which will result in fines that, if ignored, will be satisfied by asset forfeiture in the form of us seizing your shit" is consistent with your description of "asking under threat of harm" while also being an extremely normal thing for a country to do and not a crime.

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

There is an archived version, and I attached the full report to the post.

Infamousblt ,
@Infamousblt@hexbear.net avatar

The US drone strikes it's own citizens on foreign soil so yet again China is doing a bad thing that's not nearly as bad as what the US is doing and everyone just ignores what the US is doing and shouts BUT CHYNA! Racist hacks

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

I will be the first one to accuse US of being a hypocrite criminal state, but this whole mentality of excusing China's abhorrent behavior because someone else is worse is just as bad as ignoring US crimes.

Infamousblt ,
@Infamousblt@hexbear.net avatar

Abducting someone is only "abhorrent" without the context. It's only bad if you assume they don't have a good reason for it. And you can only assume they don't have a good reason for it if you buy into the propaganda that the Chinese government is some entity made of pure evil.

Maybe these folks were past their visa, or were being extradited for some crime. Who knows. There are lots of super valid reasons for an embassy to "abduct" someone. World governments do that kind of shit all of the time for totally normal reasons. And yet where's the article about "German Embassy KIDNAPS man who was staying in the US on an expired visa." They don't exist because people naturally assume that white governments have a good reason for doing something and non white governments don't. It just racism plain and simple.

Sure maybe the Chinese government is just going around risking international incidents because some random dude is doing thought crime. Or maybe they're just getting them out of the country because they're not supposed to be there anymore. One of those is significantly more likely than the other.

noride ,

Are you really implying clandestine abduction is an acceptable method to deal with an overstayed visa?

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

Indeed, plenty of other countries extradite people, with the permissions of the other government. The difference here is China not only didn't have the permission, but they didn't even ask for it. So you can call it propaganda, while reasonable people will call it kidnapping under the existing law.

I looked for the article related to "German Embassy KIDNAPS man who was staying in the US on an expired visa" and couldn't find it. Could you provide the link for it?

Infamousblt ,
@Infamousblt@hexbear.net avatar

That's my point, said article doesn't exist, because mundane shit like "embassy does its job" is only "news" when "non white bad people country does things." It's only news when it feeds the racist propaganda machine.

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

So why does other non-racist countries doesn't cover it if it's happening. Countries that oppose US on stuff like their double standards, war crimes and other hypocrisies release plenty of articles on those topics. But by your own statement, there are 0 articles about this.

I'm not one of those people that will say US good, China bad without looking at the context and judging it on its own merit, but you are not helping your case here. I need some objective details of what you are claiming to be true.

Infamousblt ,
@Infamousblt@hexbear.net avatar

They probably are. They probably aren't covering them in English though, it's not for English speaking audiences. China, as an example, has very publicly chastised the US for its countless human rights violations over the years. Many non-Western countries have.

You're talking about my case here, but your case basically boils down to "I don't see countries reporting on Western crimes in English, so it must not be happening" which...is certainly an argument you could make. Western countries have a horrible track record of reporting on their own crimes, and non Western countries probably aren't writing lots of English articles for English speaking audiences because that isn't who their readership is. I guess if you're fluent in some other languages and spend a lot of time reading non Western media in non-English languages then you'd have a stronger argument here. I kinda doubt that though. And I bet if I did start pulling out less Western media sources that do report in English like Al Jazeera or RT I would be immediately called out for parroting anti-Western propaganda. It's a real catch 22.

My argument is "Western governments fund propaganda efforts against their perceived competition, so stop parroting it as if it's objective fact." They don't even hide that they're doing it, it's not like this is some nutter conspiracy theory. There is plenty to be critical of China for, but "Chinese Embassy Doing Embassy Things" isn't one of them and only serves to fuel anti Asian racism and propaganda.

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

Like I said, US is a perfect example of hypocrisy, but their hypocrisy doesn't automatically absolve China of its own actions. I don't justify US, it's you who are trying to justify China's actions.

I welcome any non-English source. Though if it's never posted in English, it kind of defeats the purpose of exposing English-speaking countries bad behavior.

I don't care about the source, I care about the content. There are plenty of bad articles by reputable sources, and there are plenty of good articles by garbage sources.

And all countries release propaganda. Literally all of them, it's their job. The core issue here is that Western propaganda is mostly influenced by corporations, since governments doesn't directly control the media. While in Asia, the government mostly owns the media. That doesn't automatically make it everything they release bad, but when they disallow negative coverage, it creates a negative impression.
And there are plenty of independent media organizations that report on their own countries crimes in the west. Their influence stops at corporate media. While in contrast, there are no independent media organizations that report on Asia's crimes.

Embassy's authority only extends to their embassy grounds. The moment, they step outside, they are subject to the countries laws, where forcibly moving a person against their will is illegal. If there is a legal justification for it, it has to go through those countries legal system.

420blazeit69 ,

China's abhorrent behavior

What is abhorrent here? The article you linked to has the report's author saying that telling a citizen to return = kidnapping. It's trumped-up bullshit.

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

If I first threaten your family member if you don't do exactly as I say, it is not a simple request to return home. There is a legal process for that called extradition.

420blazeit69 ,

What you're describing is not kidnapping. The article implies China is threatening family members, but it provides no examples, and I have no reason to trust people who deliberately mischaracterize the facts.

If China, for example, was arresting family members of people for no other reason besides being related to a citizen China wants to return home, the authors would probably have just said that.

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

The report provides more details, I attached the link to the full report in the post.

wahming ,

Also, they consider anybody of Chinese ethnicity to be 'their people'. Even if you've not been to China ever in your life. Fuck pooh bear

MattsAlt ,
@MattsAlt@hexbear.net avatar

Care to explain how calling a person of Asian ancestry Pooh Bear isn't incredibly racist?

DontMakeMoreBabies ,

Are you retarded or just being intentionally obtuse?

BrikoX OP Mod ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

Your comment on "China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds" posted in !globalnews was removed.
Reason: Rule 3 - Respectful Communication.

Please read the community rules.

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