Conservative MP Michael Chong rises during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 13, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Justin Tang)
MPs have voted to invite representatives from security agencies to testify at a House of Commons committee on reports of three unofficial Chinese police stations that are said to be established in Toronto. The vote comes as some countries are investigating reports of similar Chinese police services and their alleged use for coercing Chinese diasporas and overseas dissidents.
Conservative MP Michael Chong introduced the motion that was adopted by MPs at the Oct. 18 meeting of the Special Committee on the Canada-People’s Republic of China Relationship, asking that the committee invite officials including the public safety minister, members of the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and experts on police and intelligence to testify before the committee. Two meetings will be held, though the specific dates have yet to be decided.
The reports on the Chinese police stations were first published last month in a study by the Spain-based human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders. The study was conducted to look into the Chinese regime’s claims that between April 2021 and July 2022, it had “persuaded” 230,000 Chinese living in a foreign country to “voluntarily” return to China to face criminal proceedings in relation to telecommunication fraud.
The study noted that the 2018 anti-fraud campaign was at first small in scale, but expanded rapidly with the creation and use of overseas police stations like the three in Toronto. At the time of its publication in September, the study said there were over 50 such stations being established in dozens of countries across five continents.
Map of the 30 countries where Chinese police have established 54 known "110 Chinese overseas police stations." (Courtesy of Safeguard Defenders)
While the Chinese authorities claimed that the overseas police stations were for operating services like renewing driver’s licenses for Chinese diasporas, the Safeguard Defenders study shows that the “persuasion to return” is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ”involuntary returns“ operation, which includes the ”Fox Hunt“ and ”Sky Net” campaigns. Under these operations, either the targets would be approached directly, or their family members back in China would be contacted by the Chinese police, which the study said would employ methods including intimidation, harassment, or imprisonment to force the targets into returning to China.
Safeguard Defenders also noted that should the targets refuse to return, their children in China would likely lose rights to education, while the targets themselves are often deprived of the right to a fair trial. Many who are targeted are also non-suspects living abroad.
The over 50 Chinese police stations listed in the study are run by two provincial-level police agencies in China, though a co-author of the study, Peter Dahlin, noted that there could be more than ten Chinese provinces that are operating such police stations around the world, though they have yet to be discovered. This means that there could be more than just three stations in Canada, Dahlin told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.
Earlier this month, the foreign affairs critic Michael Chong asked Weldon Epp, a director from Global Affairs Canada, whether his department has made representations to the Chinese regime “about how unacceptable it is” that the CCP has allegedly established the police stations, which Chong said are reportedly being used to “intimidate Canadians and even coerce them in going back to China.”
Epp, who was testifying before the Canada-China committee on Oct. 4, said the foreign affairs department is working with partner agencies to ascertain “whether there’s a basis to the allegations.”
Some European countries like Ireland and Spain have begun investigating reports of the unauthorized Chinese police stations allegedly established within their territories.
