“Selection of clashes”: China criticizes growing risk abroad Human Rights News

Wang Jingyou, who lived in Turkey last year, saw that the 7,000 kilometers (4350 miles) between his and his homeland were not an obstacle to an insulted Chinese state.

Wang left China after expressing support for TikTok’s Hong Kong democracy protests, but after questioning the outcome of the Indian-Chinese border clash in February 2021 on social media, mainland authorities took action.

Half an hour after the publication, Chongqing’s parents visited his parents. They were then arrested.

Wang, who is in his early thirties, is said to have “slandered and despised the heroes”, as well as “collecting quarrels”, two accusations commonly used in China to silence government criticism.

“I’m not in China, I’m in Europe,” Wang told Al Jazeera. “I said something. I didn’t do anything and my (name) was listed on the government’s website, in the official media, as well as in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “

Wang found himself on a month-long persecution trip in April 2021 when he was arrested while flying from Dubai and threatened with exile in China, which he almost avoided when his story became international news. Wang and his bride traveled to various countries before finally applying for asylum in the Netherlands, but until China revoked their passport.

“We are in the Netherlands, but they also have many, many ways to find us,” Wang said, complaining that he also continues to receive threatening text messages and phone calls with a Dutch phone number.

Wang’s story may seem dramatic, but it’s no exception that Xi Jinping in China, a human rights guard, according to Safeguard Defenders, released a new report on the country’s widespread practice of “voluntary return” on Tuesday. That pressure has put more than 10,000 suspected Chinese “fugitives” on arrest or prosecution for alleged corruption and other crimes that have forced them to return from abroad since 2014, according to official data.

Methods of “encouraging” return can be changed online by harassing and harassing friends and relatives online, bringing a citizen abroad through Chinese or domestic security agents, and “more irregular” methods such as state-sponsored kidnapping, Safeguard Defenders said. In some cases, the authorities may freeze family property or even freeze it threatening to remove children from their families.

‘I wrote something’

Kidnappings typically occur in countries with strong ties to China, such as Thailand or Myanmar, but Safeguard Defenders said 10 people have been abducted in Australia’s large Chinese diaspora in recent years.

The list also includes the disappearance of five employees associated with a Hong Kong bookstore that specializes in 2015. Books banned in China. A bookseller, Gui Minhai, disappeared in Thailand and others disappeared on trips to China, later appearing under Chinese arrest.

China also uses Interpol “red notes“A citizen who is sent to the police and immigration departments around the world can be exiled to his home, where he is sentenced to 99 percent of his sentence, according to the guard.

“Fair returns” have become more common since China launched its ambitious anti-corruption campaign in 2012, and in 2014 Operation Foxhunt suffered allegations of foreign corruption to repatriate Communist Party officials, and in 2015 targeted a wider Sky Net operation. money laundering.

Although nominally based on law enforcement, Operation Foxhunt is described in the report by Safeguard Defenders as “a campaign to enforce political loyalty, prevent intra-party partisanship and the general incorporation of Party discipline.”

Both campaigns have seen a 700 percent increase in the number of Chinese seeking asylum abroad between 2012 and 2020, as China’s civil and political rights have already been curtailed under President Xi, a rights group said.

That number does not include the 88,000 Hong Kong immigration scheme that sought to relocate to the UK in 2021, following the enactment of a national security law for Chinese territory, Amnesty says.decimated“Beijing has promised to respect its freedoms and rights for at least 2047.

More than 175,000 people have been officially recognized as refugees, but that has not stopped the Chinese authorities from organizing “voluntary returns,” whether they are government defectors, Falun Gong practitioners, human rights defenders, political dissidents or even ordinary citizens like the fallen Wang. against increasingly strict authorities.

Wang says he was doing what millions of other people do every day – sharing his opinions on social media.

“We did nothing against China,” he said. “I wrote something. I never thought they would see it. “