Criminal Office

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Discloses Names of Chinese Dissidents to Beijing
BY EVA FU

The United Nations Human Rights Council on June 26, 2019. 

Emma Reilly, a UN employee who first alleged the practice in 2013, said in an Oct. 21 letter to senior U.S. diplomats and members of Congress, “The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) continues to provide China with advance information on whether named human rights defenders plan to attend meetings" in Geneva. 

A United Nations whistleblower has accused the organization’s human rights agency of endangering Chinese rights activists by disclosing their names to the Chinese regime.
“The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) apparently continues to provide China with advance information on whether named human rights defenders plan to attend meetings (in Geneva),” Emma Reilly, a human rights officer at the OHCHR, said in an Oct. 21 letter to U.S. congress members and senior officials, Fox News reported on Dec. 14.
The list of names provided to the Chinese authorities included Tibetan and Uyghur activists, some of whom are U.S. citizens or residents.
Reilly said that the practice has continued since 2013.

Reilly, an Irish and British dual national, also accused the organization of retaliating against her in response to the complaints.“Instead of taking action to stop names being handed over, the UN has focused its energy on retaliating against me for daring to report it. I have been ostracized, publicly defamed, deprived of functions, and my career has been left in tatters,” Reilly said.
She also said the UN approved of Beijing’s request for the name list even though it denied a similar request from Turkey.
According to Washington-based non-profit Government Accountability Project, Reilly first raised objections to the handover of dissidents’ names in early 2013 through an internal report. 

She said in response to an inquiry from the Chinese UN ambassador, she and other staff were instructed to provide information on whether 13 human rights activists were planning to attend a Human Rights Council session.
Reilly had also reported such practices to senior staff members and through other internal channels, but saw no immediate action from the organization until the Irish government intervened in 2016, the Government Accountability Project said.

OHCHR helped China arrest and kill Cao Shunli
The advocacy group further noted the disappearance of Chinese lawyer and activist Cao Shunli at a Beijing airport in September 2013, while Cao was on her way for a UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva. 

The arrest took place six months after Reilly’s first internal report. 

Cao died in detention in China six months later after being denied medical treatment.
Reilly had suffered from a range of reprisals due to her speaking up, including being discriminated for promotion, excluded from meetings, and receiving prejudicial performance evaluations.
Responding to Gomez’s comments, Reilly said that the UN has “consistently refused to act” on her request to “stop this horrific practice.”
“When Chinese dissidents come to the UN to speak out about human rights abuses, the last thing they expect is for the UN to report them to China,” she said.

Chinese Influence at the UN
Concerns over the Chinese regime’s influence at the United Nations Human Rights Council have been mounting in recent years.
In July, the Chinese delegate twice interrupted Hong Kong singer and activist Denise Ho during her testimony at the council, during which she appealed to the UN to remove China from the organization and speak up for Hong Kong, a city embroiled in protests since June in opposition to growing political interference from Beijing.
In November 2018, eight non-profit groups in a joint statement expressed concerns after the United Nations Human Rights Council removed at least seven of their submissions in a report for consideration by UN member states ahead of a review of Beijing’s human rights record. 

The groups voiced concern that the submissions were objected to by the Chinese Communist Party.
In April 2017, security officials at the UN headquarters in New York expelled a prominent Uyghur activist Dolkun Isa from the premise without explanation. 

Later in 2018, the former Under-Secretary-General for the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Wu Hongbo, revealed in an interview with Chinese state broadcaster CCTV that he had personally ordered the activist’s expulsion.
“As a Chinese diplomat, we can’t be a bit careless when it comes to issues relating to China’s national sovereignty and national interests,” Wu said at the time.
The Chinese regime has detained an estimated more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the northwestern colony of East Turkestan in a massive campaign to combat purported “extremism.”

In January 2017, ahead of a keynote speech from Chinese dictator Xi Jinping at the UN European headquarters in Geneva, UN officials deployed rare stringent security arrangements, shutting down parking lots and meeting rooms, and sending home early its roughly 3,000 staff members. 

Small pro-Tibet protests near the site were also declared unauthorized.
Ted Piccone, senior fellow at Washington-based think tank Brookings Institution, warned that the Chinese regime is “playing the long game” in regards to human rights and reshaping the international system to its advantage.
“Without a well thought out and long-term counter-balancing strategy, China’s growing economic leverage will probably allow it to achieve its objectives”—defending its “authoritarian system of one-party control” and exporting its values that undermine international human rights system, Piccone wrote in a 2018 report.
“The result would be a weaker international human rights system in which independent voices are muffled and public criticism of egregious abuses muted behind the banner of national sovereignty.”

Chinese Doublespeak

‘Human rights with Chinese characteristics’ are in fact crimes against humanity
By Omer Kanat

In 2017, three days before Human Rights Day on December 10, Beijing hosted the ‘South-South Human Rights Forum.’

The event took place as the Chinese authorities were interning vast numbers of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in concentration camps. 

More than 300 delegates from 70 countries attended. 

The outcome document, the ‘Beijing Declaration,’ affirmed states should “choose a human rights development path or guarantee model that suits its specific conditions.” 

In sum, China sought an international clearance for the concept of ‘human rights with Chinese characteristics’ sublimating individual and collective freedoms to the needs of the state.

The world is learning quickly about the Chinese Communist Party’s vision of human rights. 

In East Turkestan, Hong Kong, Tibet, Southern Mongolia, Taiwan, and China’s heartland, the Chinese government has met any opposition with repression and destabilization. 

Indeed, the application of the latest technologies to create a pervasive system of surveillance indicates the party has taken the step of preempting any resistance to its authoritarian rule. 

The recent leaks of government documents to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and The New York Times lay bare how the party intends to commit cultural genocide against the Uyghur people through “no mercy” policies.
The label ‘human rights with Chinese characteristics’ is a misnomer. 

It is how the Chinese Communist Party attempts to entangle the interests of Chinese people with the logics of their continued power. 

If it was at all possible, just ask any one of the imprisoned Chinese human rights lawyers how they feel about “the socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics and human rights protection.” 

However, the imposition of the party’s vision of human rights does not stop at China’s borders. 

The profitable export of surveillance technology enables states to restrict the fundamental human rights of individuals on every continent.

A boy wearing a blue mask with tears of blood takes part in a protest march of ethnic Uighurs asking for the European Union to call upon China to respect human rights in the Chinese East Turkestan colony and ask for the closure of “re-education center” where Uighurs are detained, during a demonstration around the EU institutions in Brussels on April 27, 2018. 

Human Rights Day commemorates the day the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), a foundational document outlining rights standards and translated into over 500 languages, including Uyghur. 

It’s worth revisiting the 30 articles of the UDHR. 

From Article 5, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” to Article 9, “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile,” to Article 20, “Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association,” China is in open violation of these fundamental rights in regards to the Uyghur people.
It is, therefore, no surprise the Chinese government is actively subverting the concept of universal human rights by cooking up its own version. 

Since 2017, evidence of mass arbitrary detention and torture of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples has become indisputable. 

The Chinese government has rationalized these crimes against humanity within the logics of ‘vocational training,’ as if the systemic ethnocide of their people was somehow in the interests of the Uyghurs.

File photo posted by the East Turkestan Judicial Administration to its WeChat account. 

However, the Chinese Communist Party does not limit the spread of its concept of human rights to events such as the South-South Human Rights Forum. 

More alarming, Beijing is leveraging the United Nations itself to undermine the standards set out in the UDHR. 

In recent years, China has been able to mute criticism, as well as find champions for its rights abuses among UN member states. 

This has been partly achieved through an exchange of loans and grants for silence and support, as well as threats and intimidation.
Furthermore, China has targeted individual human rights defenders. 

In 2017, China tried to prevent me from delivering my statement at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York, and at the 2019 Forum, it attempted to do the same to the President of the World Uyghur Congress Dolkun Isa. 

In 2013, China detained Cao Shunli, who was on her way to attend China’s Universal Periodic Review in 2013. 

She was charged with illegal assembly, picking quarrels and provoking trouble and died in detention in 2014. 

Remember, this is a state the UN Secretary-General has called “a pillar of international cooperation and multilateralism.”
Among the enablers of Xi Jinping’s repression are states with disreputable records attracted to a possible exemption from universal standards that ‘human rights with Chinese characteristics’ affords. 

And again, if we could freely ask the populations who reside in these states how they feel about such a concept, there would be few advocates. 

Therefore, on Human Rights Day, we have a responsibility to defend those who defend universal values and be clear ‘never again’ has meaning. 

There is injustice everywhere and we must fight it. 

Uyghurs are among them, for example, the imprisoned Ilham Tohti, and in exile Rebiya Kadeer, Rushan Abbas, and Gulchehra Hoja, whose families have been detained and disappeared in East Turkestan because of their advocacy. 

The second ‘South-South Human Rights Forum’ is opening in Shanghai for this year’s Human Rights Day. 

The dangerous fiction of the ‘Beijing Declaration’ that there are exceptions to the universality of rights should be firmly resisted.

UN: China Responds to Rights Review with Threats

Member States Should Seek International Inquiry into Widescale Chinese Abuses

Human Rights Watch

Atushi city concentration camp in East Turkestan

Geneva – China used pressure and warnings to stifle criticism of its poor human rights record throughout the United Nations Human Rights Council session that concluded on March 22, 2019, in Geneva, Human Rights Watch said today. 

China provided no credible response to concerns raised about the government’s rights violations, notably the mass arbitrary detention of an estimated one million Turkic Muslims in China’s East Turkestan colony.
“For years China has worked behind the scenes to weaken UN human rights mechanisms,” said John Fisher, Geneva director. 

“But the growing global outcry over its mistreatment of East Turkestan’s Muslims has sent China into panic mode, using public as well as private pressure to block concerted international action.”
A letter sent by China to ambassadors in Geneva, which Human Rights Watch obtained, warns delegations that “in the interest of our bilateral relations and continued multilateral cooperation,” they should not “co-sponsor, participate in or be present at” a panel event on March 13 on human rights violations in East Turkestan, hosted by the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. 

In addition, some delegates from the global South told Human Rights Watch that Chinese diplomats had personally approached them and warned them not to attend the event.
China’s rights record was under formal scrutiny at this session as the Human Rights Council considered the report of China’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a regular review of the rights record of each UN member state. 

Delegates attending the session identified a number of concerns about China’s efforts to mute criticism and to present a distorted account of its rights record, including:

• Pressuring UN officials to remove the UN country team and certain nongovernmental organization submissions from UPR materials;
• Providing blatantly false or misleading responses on critical issues, such as on violations of religious freedom; mass detention centers, and lack of due process safeguards in East Turkestan;
• Urging delegations to sign up for the UPR to praise China’s rights record;
• Approaching delegations that criticized China’s rights record to warn of negative consequences to their bilateral relationship;
• Prevailing upon member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to commend China for its treatment of its Muslim population;
• Flooding speaker lists with government-organized nongovernmental organizations (GONGOs) to uncritically endorse China’s rights record, while not allowing any opportunity for independent China groups to participate in any government consultation or make submissions without fear of reprisals;
• Seeking to block accreditation of a Uyghur activist, Dolkun Isa, and publicly denouncing him without basis as a “terrorist” during an event held by a nongovernmental group, and denouncing a Uyghur panelist at the state-led side event, ominously citing details of the whereabouts and status of his family members;
• Exhibiting a massive week-long photo display outside UN meeting rooms depicting Uyghurs as happy and grateful to the Chinese authorities; and
• Seeking to silence a nongovernmental group from speaking on East Turkestan at the council by raising points of order.

Despite China’s efforts to prevent criticism, numerous government delegations, the UN high commissioner for human rights, UN rights experts, treaty bodies, and many nongovernmental organizations have all drawn attention to China’s sweeping violations in East Turkestan and called for unfettered access for international monitors to conduct an independent assessment.
“It speaks volumes that China felt it necessary to twist arms and mount propaganda displays to try to suppress scrutiny of its rights record,” Fisher said. 

“Now it’s up to governments to take action at the June Council session and show that China is being held to international rights standards.”

China's Final Solution

China Spiriting Uyghur Detainees Away From East Turkestan to Prisons in Inner Mongolia, Sichuan
By Shohret Hoshur

Police patrol the area outside Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, in China's East Turkestan colony, June 26, 2017.

Ethnic Uyghurs held in political “re-education camps” in northwest China’s East Turkestan colony are being sent to prisons in Inner Mongolia and Sichuan province, officials have confirmed, adding to the growing list of locations detainees are being secretly transferred to.
In October last year, RFA’s Uyghur Service reported that authorities in the East Turkestan had begun covertly sending detainees to prisons in Heilongjiang province and other parts of China to address an “overflow” in overcrowded camps, where up to 1.1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been held since April 2017.
And earlier this month, RFA spoke to officials in both Shaanxi province and neighboring Gansu province, who confirmed that Uyghur and other Muslim detainees from East Turkestan had been sent to prisons there, although they were unable to provide specific numbers or dates for when they had been transferred.
The first report, which was based on statements by officials in both East Turkestan and Heilongjiang, came in the same month that East Turkestan chairman Shohrat Zakir confirmed to China’s official Xinhua news agency the existence of the camps, calling them an effective tool to protect the country from "terrorism" and provide vocational training for Uyghurs.
As global condemnation over the camp network has grown, including calls for international observers to be allowed into East Turkestan to investigate the situation there, reports suggest that authorities are transferring detainees to other parts of China as part of a bid to obfuscate the scale of detentions of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the region.
RFA recently spoke to an official at the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Women’s Prison who said that detainees from East Turkestan had been transferred to detention facilities in the region, but was unable to provide details without obtaining authorization from higher-level officials.
“There are two prisons that hold prisoners from East Turkestan—they are Wutaqi [in Hinggan (in Chinese, Xing'an) League’s Jalaid Banner] Prison and Salaqi [in Bogot (Baotou) city’s Tumd Right Banner] Prison,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
When asked how many Uyghur detainees are held in the prisons, the official said she could not disclose the number “because it is strictly confidential.”
The official said she had attended a meeting on transfers of detainees from East Turkestan and that prior to the meeting attendees had received notices informing them that “we are not allowed to disclose any information regarding the transportation program.”
“Regardless of who is making inquiries, we cannot disclose any information unless we first obtain permission from our superiors,” she said.
An official at the Wutaqi Prison Command Center also told RFA that detainees from East Turkestan are being held at Wutaqi, as well as a second one in Inner Mongolia, without specifying which one.
The official, who also declined to provide his name, said the detainees had been transferred to the two prisons as early as August last year, but was unsure whether they were being permanently relocated to the two prisons or being held there temporarily before they are transferred elsewhere.
“The prisoners are placed in two prisons, but [the officials at the facilities] don’t report to us about what is happening inside,” he said, before referring further inquiries to his supervisor.
“Regarding the number and the exact location of where they are held [in the prisons], I am unable to say,” he said.
The official said he was unsure of whether any detainees from East Turkestan had been sent to Inner Mongolia recently, as information about the transfers is closely guarded.
“It is impossible for me to tell you how many prisoners have been transferred here this month or last month,” he said.
“The authorities are keeping all the information very secret—even we don’t know the details.”

Sichuan transfers
Reports of detainee transfers from East Turkestan to Inner Mongolia followed indications from officials in Sichuan province that prisons there are also accepting those held in East Turkestan "re-education" camps.
When asked which prisons East Turkestan detainees are being sent to in Sichuan, an official who answered the phone at the Sichuan Provincial Prison Administration told an RFA reporter that if he was calling to “visit them,” he would first have to make an official request.
One official at a prison believed to hold detainees from East Turkestan in Yibin, a prefectural-level city in southeast Sichuan, told RFA that he “can’t discuss this issue over the phone” and suggested that the reporter file an official request for information.
But when asked about whether there had been any “ideological changes” to procedures at the facility, a fellow official who answered the phone said “these detentions are connected to "terrorism", so I can’t answer such questions.”
“The transfer of East Turkestan detainees is a secretive part of our work at the prison, so I can’t tell you anything about it,” she added.
The statements from officials in Inner Mongolia and Sichuan province followed recent reports by Bitter Winter, a website launched by the Italian research center CESNUR that focuses on religious in China, which cited “informed sources” as confirming that detainees from East Turkestan are being sent to prison facilities in other parts of the country.
The website, which routinely publishes photos and video documenting human rights violations submitted by citizen journalists from inside China, cited “CCP (Chinese Communist Party) insiders” as saying that more than 200 elderly Uyghurs in their sixties and seventies have been transferred to Ordos Prison in Inner Mongolia.
Bitter Winter also cited another source in Inner Mongolia who said one detainee was “beaten to death by the police” during his transfer, and expressed concern that the victim’s body “might already have been cremated.”
The website has previously said that the Chinese plan to disperse and detain “an estimated 500,000 Uyghur Muslims” throughout China.

Call to action
Dolkun Isa, president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress exile group, told RFA he was “deeply troubled” by the reports of secret transfers of detainees from East Turkestan to prisons in other parts of China, saying the move signalled a “very dark intent” by authorities.
“We simply cannot imagine what kind of treatment they are enduring at the hands of Chinese guards in these prisons, as this is shrouded in complete secrecy,” he said, adding that he was concerned for the well-being of the detainees.
Isa called on the international community to turn its attention to the transfers and demanded that the Chinese government disclose the total number of detainees who had been moved, as well as the location of the prisons they had been sent to.
“If the United Nations, U.S., EU, Turkey and other Muslims nations do not voice their concerns over this troubling development in a timely manner, I fear these innocent Uyghurs will perish in Chinese prisons without a trace,” he said.
China recently organized two visits to monitor re-education camps in East Turkestan—one for a small group of foreign journalists, and another for diplomats from non-Western countries, including Russia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and Thailand—during which officials dismissed claims about mistreatment and poor conditions in the facilities as “slanderous lies.”
Reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media organizations, however, has shown that those in the camps are detained against their will and subjected to political indoctrination, routinely face rough treatment at the hands of their overseers, and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often overcrowded facilities.
Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the Germany-based European School of Culture and Theology, has said that some 1.1 million people are or have been detained in the camps—equating to 10 to 11 percent of the adult Muslim population of East Turkestan.
In November 2018, Scott Busby, the deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the U.S. Department of State, said there are "at least 800,000 and possibly up to a couple of million" Uyghurs and others detained at "re-education" camps in East Turkestan without charges, citing U.S. intelligence assessments.
Citing credible reports, U.S. lawmakers Marco Rubio and Chris Smith, who head the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, recently called the situation in East Turkestan "the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today."

The Chinese Can Not Be Trusted to Lead Global Institutions

The abduction of Interpol’s president shows that Beijing’s officials will be subordinate to the orders of the Communist Party.

By BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN

Meng Hongwei

China has spent years trying to gain an equal footing in international institutions originally set up by the West. 

Those efforts have seen gradual success, as Chinese nationals have come to occupy leading positions on United Nations committees, multilateral development banks, international courts, and many other organizations.
So when Meng Hongwei, a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party member who was chosen to serve as the president of Interpol in 2016, disappeared last month while visiting China, and was revealed two weeks later to have been detained by Chinese authorities, it seemed like an unforced error. 

Interpol is an important international organization tasked with facilitating cooperation between police forces in countries around the world. 

But even so, party disciplinary authorities were treating Meng first and foremost as a party member who had strayed from the straight and narrow, rather than as the internationally recognized top official of a major multilateral organization who deserves due process.
Meng’s detention shows that under Beijing’s increasingly confident global authoritarianism, China’s participation in and even its leadership of international institutions will be openly subordinate to the diktat of the Communist Party. 

This stands in stark contrast to the preceding eras under previous Presidents Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, when China paid lip service to following international law and to becoming a conforming member of the current international system.
The circumstances under which Meng disappeared highlight the authority the party still wields over Meng, even while he served as the head of a supposedly politically neutral institution. 

His disappearance first became known when his wife reported his absence to police in France, where the couple lives, and the French police launched an investigation. 

His wife had begun to worry for his safety when she received a knife emoji in a text message from her husband, taking it as a coded warning that all was not well on his trip home.
On October 7, almost two weeks after Meng went missing, Chinese authorities announced that they were charging Meng with bribery. 

After coming to power in 2012, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping launched a sweeping anti-corruption crackdown that has felled thousands of mid-level party cadres and numerous high-ranking officials.
But experts say the anti-corruption campaign is used as cover for political purges intended to strengthen Xi’s grip on power. 

There are hints of a political element in Meng’s detention; when announcing the charges against Meng, Chinese authorities also stressed the need for “absolute loyal political character.” 

Meng is now being held in a custody system notorious for torture, abuse, and denial of access to lawyers or a fair trial. 

It is certainly normal for any country to prosecute government officials for corruption; it is not normal to detain them without notice or charge, then thrust them into a system without fair representation or transparency.
That raises serious questions about the fitness of any member of the Chinese Communist Party to serve in a leadership position in international organizations. 

Meng’s detention is a clear sign that any party members abroad, no matter how high their profile or how important political neutrality is to their position, are still subject to the will and demands of the party—a party that’s willing to punish them at any cost if they stray. 

This is far truer under Xi than under his recent predecessors because one of Xi’s top goals has been to revitalize the once-moribund party, reestablish it as the main guiding force in China, and double down on party discipline.
It’s clear that Meng was the party’s man at Interpol. 

During his tenure as Interpol president, Meng simultaneously served as a vice minister in China’s public-security bureau, the country’s chief law-enforcement institution. 

It’s unlikely he could have risen to such a high position without demonstrating years of loyalty to the party. 

And the public-security bureau is behind illegal detentions and numerous other injustices visited upon a populace with few civil-rights protections. 

That means Meng spent his career climbing the ladder within a ruthless organization.
Thus, Meng’s election in 2017 to the position of Interpol president, though a largely ceremonial post, raised concerns that China would use Meng’s position to pursue political dissidents through the issuance of Interpol red notices. 

A red notice is roughly equivalent to an international arrest warrant requested by an individual government, and Interpol approves requests based not on an assessment of the target’s guilt but rather on whether the requesting government followed the appropriate laws and regulations in making the request. 

This makes the red-notice system notoriously easy to abuse; Russia, China, Turkey, Venezuela, and some Central Asian nations are known to request politically motivated red notices targeting political foes and journalists. 

Interpol member nations are not required to detain or extradite those with a red notice against them, though many do.
And indeed, shortly after Meng became president, Interpol issued a red notice for Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese billionaire who had recently threatened to release compromising information on leading members of the Communist Party.
But not everything went so smoothly for China, or for Meng. 

In February, Interpol rescinded a red notice, originally issued at China’s request, for Dolkun Isa, the Europe-based president of World Uyghur Congress, a group that advocates for a beleaguered Chinese ethnic minority. 

Beijing claims that Isa is a terrorist, and China has frequently requested that European governments arrest and deport him.
Some observers noted that about six weeks after Isa’s red notice was revoked, Meng was removed from his post as a member of the public-security bureau’s party committee, the party organ embedded inside the bureau to provide leadership and ideological guidance, leading to speculation that the party was unhappy with Meng for allowing Interpol to remove the notice.
“Look at East Turkestan,” wrote Bill Bishop, the author of the influential Sinocism newsletter, referring to the Chinese region where an estimated 1 million Muslims are being held without due process. 

“Does Beijing care if there is fleeting concern over the fate of their Interpol appointee?”
These days, Beijing seems far less concerned about the opinion of the liberal West than it once was. Rather than continuing to try to hide the existence of its concentration camps in East Turkestan, Chinese officials are declaring them to be a true societal good. 

In the contested South China Sea, China now rarely claims that it aims to uphold international law—instead, it emphasizes that no one has the right to criticize its island building and militarization there. 

Might makes right, as it were.
At the same time, Beijing wields greater sway over international institutions than ever before. 

That means stakeholders in the international system would do well to ask themselves what price they might pay if they offer leadership positions to Chinese Communist Party members. 

It’s likely that as China promotes its authoritarian system around the world, one will increasingly see the party justify and even tout its realpolitik approach to international power. 

A liberal world order built on human rights and rule of law will need to find an effective response—and soon.

Interpol tragicomedy

China and the Case of the Interpol Chief
The New York Times

China has yet to give any details of the corruption charges against Meng Hongwei, the president of Interpol, who disappeared on a visit home and was later said to have been arrested. 

Whatever the charges are, they are almost certainly not the real reason for his fate. 

In China, the law is what the Communist Party says it is — more precisely, what Xi Jinping says it is. 

And when an official of Meng’s global stature is nabbed, it’s a political decision — even if, coincidentally, he was corrupt, as is often the case in China.
Meng understood the rules of that game. 

He had been a vice minister of public security in a police state and had played a role in many operations, including Operation Fox Hunt, which tried to bring Chinese officials and businesspeople suspected of corruption back from abroad. 

His former boss, Zhou Yongkang, was imprisoned for life on corruption charges in 2015. 

Meng’s last WhatsApp message to his wife was an emoji of a knife, which she understood to mean he was in danger.
Interpol has asked Beijing for an explanation for Meng’s detention but has taken no further action. 

The agency issued a statement on Sunday that it had accepted his resignation as president “with immediate effect” and named a replacement.

Whatever else he was, Meng was the president of Interpol, a venerable international organization based in France that facilitates cooperation among police forces from its 192 member countries. 

The position of president is largely ceremonial — a secretary general, currently Jürgen Stock of Germany, runs day-to-day operations. 

But the selection of a Chinese official for the post was a major feather in China’s cap, proudly hailed by Xi a year ago as evidence that China “abided by international rules.”
The crude arrest of Meng proclaims the opposite. 

China’s behavior puts it more closely in a league with Russia, another nation whose authoritarian leader is convinced that his country is due global respect and deference by virtue of its wealth and might, and not its actions. 

Tellingly, both China and Russia have brazenly tried to use Interpol to pursue political foes. 

China put out a “red notice,” in effect a wanted alert, for Dolkun Isa, a self-exiled activist for the rights of China’s beleaguered Uighur minority. 

Russia tried to use Interpol to catch Bill Browder, a hedge-fund manager turned anti-Vladimir Putin campaigner, among other political gadflies. 

In these cases, Interpol has properly refused to cooperate.
It is possible that Meng’s failure to pursue the Isa warrant fed Xi’s anger. 

According to The Economist, a Ministry of Public Security statement condemning Meng’s alleged wrongdoings also stressed the need for “absolute loyalty” and for “resolute support” for the country’s leader.
What Meng did to join the lengthening list of officials purged by Xi may never be fully known outside the Communist hierarchy. 

What is known, and deeply troubling, is how brazenly China is prepared to wage its internal power struggles without any regard for procedures, appearances or international norms.

Chinese Saga

The Chinese head of Interpol has disappeared — in China
By James McAuley and Gerry Shih

An image from Interpol shows Meng Hongwei, Chinese president of Interpol, speaking in Bali, Nov. 10, 2016. 

PARIS — French authorities launched an investigation into the disappearance of Interpol president Meng Hongwei, whose wife informed French police that he went missing after returning to his native China last week, local media reported Friday.
Meng, a former government minister, was last seen Sept. 29, his wife said, according to unnamed French police officials cited by France’s Europe 1 radio station. 

Other police officials also confirmed the investigation to the Reuters news agency.
Interpol — headquartered in Lyon, France — is an international organization facilitating police cooperation across borders. 

Meng’s wife reported her husband’s disappearance to French authorities because she has been living in France with their children, Europe 1 reported.
A spokeswoman for France’s Interior Ministry, which oversees the national police force, did not immediately respond to a request for independent confirmation. 

Neither did a spokeswoman for the Lyon prosecutor, which oversees investigations in the region.
In a statement, Interpol said only that the disappearance is a “matter for the relevant authorities in both France and China” and declined to elaborate further.
Meng, 64, was named president of Interpol in November 2016, and his term is slated to end in 2020. He is the first Chinese citizen to head the body and was previously China’s vice minister of public security.
The circumstances of his disappearance have raised the possibility that he may have fallen into the dragnet of China’s multiyear anti-corruption campaign, which has seen thousands of officials and business executives suddenly vanish before reemerging to face government charges months later.
That would be a stunning reversal for Meng, who was elected to head Interpol two years ago at the precise moment China was seeking international help to arrest corrupt officials. 

In recent years, China has submitted to Interpol extensive lists of repatriation targets and “red notices” — an international alert for a wanted person ­— for what it says are corrupt fugitives.
At the time of his appointment, human rights groups expressed concern about the opacity of China’s legal system and warned that Beijing could use its clout in Interpol to arrest political dissidents.
During Meng’s tenure, China has submitted “red notices” for dissident business executives and figures such as the German national Dolkun Isa, the head of the Munich-based World Uighur Congress that represents the Uighur minority in far western China. 

China has labeled Isa a terrorist but has not provided public proof.
China last year also requested multiple Interpol red notices seeking the arrest of Guo Wengui, a dissident billionaire who had fled to New York while claiming he possessed explosive secrets about the Communist Party leadership.

Is Interpol becoming China's Gestapo

China: Families of Interpol Targets Harassed
End Collective Punishment in Pursuit of Suspects
Human Rights Watch

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping speaks during the 86th INTERPOL General Assembly at Beijing National Convention Center on September 26, 2017 in Beijing, China. 

 
Chinese authorities should immediately stop harassing and detaining family members of suspects living abroad to compel their return to China, Human Rights Watch said today. 

The global police organization Interpol and foreign governments should reject China’s misuse of Interpol’s “red notice” system, which alerts governments to people sought for arrest.
Human Rights Watch interviews with five “red notice” individuals found that the Chinese authorities subjected their family members in China to forms of collective punishment – unlawfully punishing someone for the actions of another. 

The authorities have also pressured relatives to travel to the countries where red notice individuals live to persuade them to return to China.
“Chinese authorities have put all kinds of unlawful pressure on relatives of corruption suspects to get them to return to China,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. 

“There is no legal basis for these traumatizing guilt-by-association tactics.”

China’s wanton mistreatment of relatives of corruption suspects is bad enough, but Interpol and other governments should not be enabling Chinese abuses abroad.
                                                                          Sophie Richardson

In late 2012, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping launched a purported “war on corruption.” 

As part of that campaign, China asked Interpol to issue red notices against individuals living abroad who have been accused of "corruption".
Interpol red notices are alerts seeking the arrest and extradition of wanted people, issued at the request of the government seeking those individuals. 

They are not international arrest warrants, however, as Interpol’s member countries can determine what legal action to take in response.
In some countries that do not have extradition treaties with China, Chinese authorities have tried to secure the return of red notice individuals by putting pressure on their family members in China. Official reports often depict the individuals initially refusing to return, but later changing their minds due to “the deterrent effect of the law, policy appeals, and family influence.”
Human Rights Watch research revealed that Chinese authorities, using Interpol red notices as a justification, used various means to systematically harass family members of red notice individuals. 

Police and prosecutors visited or summoned relatives without presenting any legal documents and threatened to detain them if they failed to convince the red notice individual to return to China. 

Human Rights Watch identified at least two cases in which authorities formally arrested relatives.
The police have also barred family members – including spouses, children, parents, and siblings and their families – from traveling outside China. 

Children of red notice individuals have been blocked from attending schools abroad. 

Authorities have also imposed collective punishments on relatives by freezing their assets, firing them from their positions in government-owned companies, or warning their business partners not to work with them.
Human Rights Watch takes no position on the merits of Interpol red notices discussed below. However, even properly issued red notices would not justify collective punishment of family members.
Authorities in countries in which red notice individuals reside should investigate harassment and other abuses by Chinese officials or their agents against these individuals or their family members. 

Authorities in the countries in which they reside should ensure red notice individuals in their countries have adequate protection. 

In cases where red notice individuals may be subject to extradition, those authorities should provide them adequate opportunity to contest the extradition, and not return anyone to China if they are likely to face persecution, torture, or ill-treatment there.
Interpol should conduct careful due diligence before processing information provided by the Chinese government and before facilitating information-sharing between the Chinese police and police forces of other countries, Human Rights Watch said. 

They should also ensure that fundamental rights of red notice individuals and their family members are protected.
“China’s wanton mistreatment of relatives of corruption suspects is bad enough, but Interpol and other governments should not be enabling Chinese abuses abroad,” Richardson said. 

Detention, Threats, and Harassment of Relatives of ‘Red Card’ Individuals
Human Rights Watch interviewed four people based in the United States and one in Canada. 

All interviews were conducted in person or by phone. 

They are from four provinces and one municipality in China, and all said they are currently on Interpol’s “red notice” list. 

Human Rights Watch also spoke to three lawyers who represent clients subjected to red notices. 

Three red notice individuals asked to remain anonymous for fear of government reprisal against their families in China. 

Human Rights Watch also reviewed dozens of government and media reports on returned red notice individuals, which generally corroborated the accounts of these individuals.

Detention, Threats of Detention
Interviewees told Human Rights Watch that their family members in China were very scared of the government officials who visited them. 

They said that police and prosecutors invoked Interpol red notices to justify punishing their family members.

Liang Jianguo (pseudonym), a businessman, said, “Police told my family that the government can take ‘any actions to control’ the relatives of red notice personnel and that they won’t live a normal life [unless I] return to China.”

Zhang Datong (pseudonym) said:
They would call [my wife] first, and say, “We are coming tomorrow morning to your home at 8:30, don’t leave the house.” 

Of course, my wife wouldn’t dare to say no… they repeatedly threaten[ed] my wife that if I don’t go back, she would be detained… my wife told me many times that, “You have no idea the mental distress we’re under.” 

She is very worried that if she does anything wrong to displease or provoke them, they would not allow our children to go to school.
Zhang said that the police had also harassed his septuagenarian parents: “[My parents] are very scared, too. One time after they talked to my mother, she had to be hospitalized for a month for high blood pressure-related health issues.”

Li Gang, a former businessman in Wuhan, Hubei province, said that his mother showed signs of mental illness after sustained harassment:
When the authorities started to harass my mother, she was 79. 

During September and October 2016, it was really intense. 

The authorities came to our home about every other day. 

At the end of last year, my mother had a stroke and was hospitalized… 

My brother told me that [our] mother has been losing her mind. 

She would talk to herself, murmuring things like “Ganggang [Li Gang’s nickname], please come back. You will be fine, as long as you sort out the money issues.”

Wang Lihe (pseduonym), a former businessman, said:
They have summoned my siblings countless times, from both the [the name of the prefecture] and the provincial public security bureaus… 

Today they summon my sister, tomorrow my brother, the next day my niece, like that… 

[The police] would threaten them that if I don’t go back, they would be arrested too.

Liang said:
At the beginning, the police came [to our home] about twice a week; later, two or three times a month. 

Every time for one or two hours. 

This has been going on for over a year. 

They come whenever they want, acting like hooligans. 

They threatened my wife, saying that if she doesn’t do what they ask her to do, she would be jailed, and that once she’s jailed, she won’t be able to get out ever.
Liang said police used similar language with other relatives, including his child, a minor: “They are all scared to death. Every time my wife calls me, she cries and cries, begging me to return to China.”

Xie Weidong, a former Supreme People’s Court judge now residing in Canada, said that to compel him to return to China, authorities detained his sister and his adult son for over a year. 

Xie shared with Human Rights Watch documents detailing his case.
The Hubei procuratorate detained Xie Weidong’s sister, Xie Weifang, in September 2016 and his son, Xie Cangqiong, in December 2016 in Beijing, where they were living, and took them to Hubei province. 

Prosecutors charged Xie Weifang with taking bribes, and accused Xie Cangqiong of being a co-conspirator with Xie Weidong in an embezzlement case. 

Xie Weifang was released in January 2017, after the charges were dropped. 

Xie Cangqiong remains held at a detention center in Hubei.
In her letter to the Chinese Communist Party’s disciplinary body, the Central Commission on Discipline Inspection (CCDI), Xie Cangqiong’s mother, Wang Liwei, who is divorced from Xie Weidong, alleged that officials tortured Xie Cangqiong and threatened her: “My son and his aunt, after being tortured… had written letters pressuring Xie Weidong to return to China. [Prosecutors] threatened me…ordering me to make Xie Weidong return to China, otherwise, I would be detained, too.” 

A 2017 Supreme People’s procuratorate report revealed a case in which a family member of a red notice individual was detained. 

Chu Shilin, a businessman in Shandong province, returned to China from Canada in 2016, two months after authorities detained his ex-wife, Xu Jianhong, on suspicion of “harboring a fugitive,” on the grounds that Xu transferred money from China to Canada to aid Chu’s hiding.

Restrictions on Movement
Another tactic Chinese authorities use to compel red notice individuals to return is blocking China-based relatives from leaving the country. 

Interviewees said that none of their family members were shown any legal document for the travel ban. 

Some relatives discovered they were under a ban only when trying to leave the country, while others were informed by the authorities.

Wang Lihe said:
No one in my family can get out of the country – my mother, siblings, siblings’ spouses and children. Even my company’s employees. 

One of my employees was in the US. After they returned to China, now they can’t leave. 

My brother is also banned from travelling domestically. 

He can’t take the train, and can’t fly.

Zhang Datong said:
My daughter had already got the admission letter to a high school in the US, but she couldn’t leave the country. 

We had to find her another school [in China]. 

My son was only 8-years-old. He was stopped at the border [at the airport]. 

Even the customs officer was perplexed, saying, “Such a small child. What happened?” 

But still, he couldn’t leave, and had to go home.

Li Gang said:
[Authorities] confiscated my younger brother’s passport. 

They threatened my sister-in-law, “We know your son is attending college and it is a joint program with a US university. If you don’t convince [Li Gang] to come back, your son can’t leave the country. He will be ‘exit-banned.’”

Xie Weidong said, “My other sister and her family immigrated to Canada many years ago. Her daughter went back to China about two years ago. Now she can’t leave the country.”

Liang Jianguo said:
My parents, my wife’s parents, my siblings, my wife’s siblings, and all of their children, everyone is being “exit-banned.” 

My son had been studying in the UK for over a year, in a middle school. 

He returned to China during the break and wasn’t able to go back to the UK again.

In 2010, Jiang Chunguang, the head of a public hospital in Yunnan province, was arrested for corruption. 

Soon after, authorities issued a red notice against Jiang’s wife, Guo Xin, who at the time was in the US, accusing her of being an accomplice of her husband. 

Guo returned to China in October 2017. 

In a public letter Guo published before her return, she wrote:
The procuratorate… prevents my Canada-based older brother, his wife and daughter from entering China to visit [our] mother.… If [my] brother enters China, he will be detained… The deputy bureau chief of [the anti-corruption bureau]… phoned my sister, informing her… the exit ban…will be extended to the family’s third generation. The generation of my nieces will be banned from leaving the country.

Financial Control
Interviewees said that authorities have frozen all their assets in China, including jointly held bank accounts and real estate properties, but did not present their family members with any legal documents justifying that action. 

The relatives only became aware of the freezes when they tried to withdraw money. 

Authorities sealed off the properties with tape.
One interviewee said that his relatives’ employment was terminated due to him being on the red notice list.

Li Gang said:
My brother worked for a state-owned company. They terminated his employment. They made him go to the office of the procuratorate every day to assist the work of my case, but he hasn’t been paid. He was told that he could only get all his wages back when I return. Every day he just sits in the [procuratorate’s] office. It’s like going to jail.
Li Gang said his ex-wife’s brother also had to go to the procuratorate every day to “assist the investigation” of Li’s case.
Zhang Datong said, “[Authorities] froze all of our accounts, even my daughter’s tuition account. She had put down a deposit for the high school she was admitted into.”

Xie Weidong said that the assets in China of his sister who had immigrated to Canada, “which has nothing to do with my case…were all frozen. She only discovered this when she tried to sell one of the houses she owned.”
Liang Jianguo said that the authorities “confiscated all our properties, even the place my wife and son live. They have no place to live. There is no money for my son’s education. They are on the brink.”

Harassment Abroad
Chinese authorities have sent officials to countries where the red notice individuals reside to press them to return, sometimes wielding threats. 

A 2017 CCDI report says that Chinese police went to France to bring back businessman and red notice individual Zheng Ning. 

In May 2017, officials traveled to the US and secretly met Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire against whom Interpol had issued a red notice, to pressure him to return to China. 

The clandestine operation was discovered by US law enforcement authorities and later revealed by US-based media.
Interviewees said that Chinese authorities sent family members, lawyers, and friends to meet them in countries where they live. 

Lawyers with whom Human Rights Watch spoke said that officials typically accompany relatives on such overseas visits, and, in some cases, are even present at the meetings between the relatives and the red notice individuals.
Xie Weidong told the Globe and Mail that authorities had sent his detained sister’s former lawyer and his wife to Canada to harass him and his other sister. 

In December 2017, the lawyer and his wife appeared at Xie’s home in Toronto at 2 a.m.; they also visited the home of Xie’s sister in Ottawa.

“The police did not take any action against the lawyer, because they didn’t think he violated the law,” Xie told Human Rights Watch. 

“Now we are even more scared.”
Hubei authorities had also asked Xie’s ex-wife, Wang Liwei, in China to accompany them to go to Canada to help bring Xie back. They threatened that if Wang did not comply, they would continue to hold his son indefinitely.
“[Authorities told my ex-wife that] having an intermediary go to Canada would give cover to the officials who would want to directly speak to me [when they are in Canada],” said Xie.

Li Gang said:
Around the Spring Festival this year, officials at the procuratorate clearly told my brother that they were going to the US, in March or April [2017]. Six people. Three from the procuratorate. Two from the local CDI, plus my brother. 

My brother was told the purpose of the trip was to “persuade Li Gang to return to China.” They showed my brother the itinerary.

A CCDI report suggests that authorities sent a relative overseas to meet a red notice individual and was successful in having her return: In 2013, authorities issued a red notice against Chen Yijuan, a former manager at a state-owned energy company in Yunnan province, alleging that she had taken bribes and laundered money. 

The report says Chen’s cousin and the lawyers of Chen’s husband went to the UK, where Chen was living, to persuade her to return to China. Chen returned in 2016.

Liang Jianguo said, “[Authorities] have sent my friends – people the police consider are very close to me – to look for me. I refused to meet them. I wouldn’t tell them where I was.”
Although the practice may be common, Human Rights Watch was aware of one case in which Chinese authorities deployed people from China – who were already in the country – to harass a red notice individual.
A Chinese national in the US, who rented a room in her house to Wang Lihe, said that since Wang moved in, three former acquaintances of hers had repeatedly called, texted, and visited her, urging her to evict Wang: “They keep telling me that [Wang] is wanted by Interpol and is a very bad person. I should not let him live in my house. They had come to my house to harass me and Mr. [Wang].”

The woman said she believed the three men were acting on behalf of the Chinese government:
One time, I inadvertently told the men that Mr. [Wang] went with his daughter to [an event]. Mr. [Wang] later told me that his relatives in China called him, telling him that the day after [that event], [authorities] had told them that Mr. [Wang] had gone to [the event].
The woman also said that the authorities told Wang’s family that because Wang had a very good relationship with his daughter, they would work on bringing the daughter back to China as a way to force Wang to return.

Background on Skynet, Fox Hunt
Since Xi Jinping assumed power in 2013, the Chinese government has carried out a sweeping anti-corruption campaign. 

Domestically, partly through shuanggui – a secretive detention system ridden with abuses that Human Rights Watch has extensively documented – the campaign has netted thousands of party leaders and rank-and-file government officials. 

Internationally, the government has launched operations known as “Fox Hunt” and “Skynet.”
In June 2014, authorities established the International Office of Pursuing Fugitives and Recovering Embezzled Assets 国际追逃追赃工作办公室 – comprised of personnel from eight government agencies including the CCDI, Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – to hunt down suspected corrupt individuals who have fled abroad. 

By October 2017, 3,587 fugitives from over 90 countries had been returned to China, according to the CCDI.
In April 2015, China published a most-wanted list, called “100 red notices” 百名红通, against 100 officials and business executives accused in major corruption cases. 

According to government statistics, by December 2017, 51 out of “100 red notices” had returned to China. 

Among them, 10 were reportedly repatriated by foreign governments, while 35 returned “voluntarily” after being “persuaded.”
The total number of red notices that Interpol has issued at the request of the Chinese government in recent years is unclear, as is the number currently in effect, since many notices are only known to national law enforcement authorities, and many of those subjected to them do not know of their existence. 

At present, 83 Chinese nationals are publicly listed on Interpol’s “red notice” webpage.

China’s Red Notice Abuses; Interpol’s "Neutrality" 
Interpol’s constitution stipulates that international police cooperation should be conducted in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a set of human rights standards that all United Nations member countries are expected to uphold. 

Interpol’s Rules on the Processing of Data states that data processing in the Interpol Information System “should respect the basic rights of the persons who are the subject of cooperation.”
According to Interpol, red notices may not violate the organization’s policy of neutrality, found in article 3 of its constitution, which forbids the organization from “undertak[ing] any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious, or racial character.” 

However, China has issued politically motivated red notices against dissidents and others abroad whom China sought to apprehend. 

Dolkun Isa, who campaigns from Germany on behalf of the ethnic Uyghur community in Xinjiang, has been subjected to a red notice for over a decade but has been unable to access or remove it, interfering with his international travel. 

US-based activist Wang Zaigang believed the red notice against him was in retaliation for his pro-democracy activism outside of China.
Given China’s record of arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearance, and unlawful forced repatriation, Human Rights Watch in a September 2017 letter to Interpol raised concerns that those subject to Interpol red notices from China could be at risk of torture and other ill-treatment.
Human Rights Watch also raised concerns about the ability of Meng Hongwei, who assumed Interpol’s presidency in November 2016, to maintain Interpol’s policy of neutrality, and to respect and protect human rights as set out in its constitution. 

Meng is a vice minister in China’s Ministry of Public Security, the police force that has harassed, arbitrarily detained, and tortured countless people for exercising their fundamental rights. 

Human Rights Watch has not received a reply from Interpol.

Gestapol

China hosts Interpol meeting amid concerns Beijing is using the police network to pursue political foes overseas.
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN

Interpol opened its main international annual meeting in China on Tuesday amid concerns that Beijing is using its growing influence over the police network to pursue political foes overseas.
Xi Jinping said in a speech to the Interpol General Assembly that China wants to work with other countries and organizations to achieve "global security governance."
However, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Interpol needs to address China's misuse of the organization's "red notice" system to seek the arrest and extradition of wanted people.
The election of Chinese Vice Public Security Minister Meng Hongwei as Interpol's president last year alarmed rights advocates who cite abuses, opacity and political manipulation within China's legal system.
China has used red notices to flag cases bearing a decided political taint, making the individuals involved vulnerable to law enforcement action by foreign government bodies.
Human Rights Watch raised the case of Dolkun Isa, an activist in Germany for the Turkic-Muslim Uighur ethnic group native to China's far-western Xinjiang region. 

It said Isa has had trouble traveling internationally since a red notice was issued against him more than a decade ago. 

China routinely accuses overseas Uighur advocates of supporting terrorism while providing little evidence to back up their claims.
The group also mentioned U.S.-based activist Wang Zaigang, whom it said appeared to have been targeted with a red notice in response to his activities promoting Chinese democracy.
Those served with red notices risk torture and other forms of ill-treatment given China's record of abuse, Human Rights Watch said.
"Interpol claims to operate according to international human rights standards, but China has already shown a willingness to manipulate the system," Sophie Richardson, the group's China director, was quoted as saying in a news release. 

"And with China's vice-minister of public security ... as president, Interpol's credibility is on the line," Richardson said.
The Ministry of Public Security is China's main police agency, charged with silencing and detaining critics of the ruling Communist Party, often outside the letter of the law.
Chinese politics expert Willy Lam said China has been using its economic heft to influence groups such as Interpol to further the party's foreign and domestic policy aims.
Lam pointed to cases where the line has blurred between accusations of corruption and apparent attempts to retaliate against those who make allegations against members of the communist leadership, such as outspoken businessman Guo Wengui.
Pressure on Guo has been building since April when a red notice was issued seeking his arrest on corruption-related charges. 

Chinese authorities sentenced several of his employees for fraud in June and have also opened an investigation into rape charges against Guo brought by a former assistant.
In recent months, Guo has become a widely followed social media presence by serving up sensational tales of corruption and scandal within the Communist Party's innermost sanctum, including among Xi's closest allies.
"China has turned Interpol into another venue for projecting its power," Lam said. 

"They've put a lot of investment into pursuing fugitives abroad, those wanted for political reasons."

Rogue Nation

China Wields Its "Laws" to Silence Critics From Abroad
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and CHRIS HORTON

Lee Ming-cheh, second from left, an activist from Taiwan, in court in the Chinese city of Yueyang, Hunan Province, last week. The case against Mr. Lee punctuates what critics warn are China’s efforts to stifle what it perceives as threats from overseas. 

BEIJING — On the morning he disappeared, the activist Lee Ming-cheh crossed from Macau into mainland China to meet with democracy advocates.
It was 177 days later when he reappeared in public, standing in the dock of a courtroom in central China last week, confessing to a conspiracy to subvert the Communist Party by circulating criticism on social media.
The circumstances surrounding Mr. Lee’s detainment remain murky, but what has made the case stand out from the many that the Chinese government brings against its critics is that Mr. Lee is not a citizen of China, but rather of Taiwan, the self-governing island over which Beijing claims sovereignty.
The proceedings against Mr. Lee, who is expected to be sentenced as soon as this week, punctuated what critics have warned are China’s brazen efforts to extend the reach of its security forces to stifle what it perceives as threats to its power emanating from overseas.
In recent months alone, China has sought the extradition of ethnic Uighur students studying overseas in Egypt and carried out the cinematic seizure of a billionaire from a Hong Kong hotel in violation of an agreement that allows the former British colony to run its own affairs. 

The billionaire, Xiao Jianhua, now appears to be a material witness in another politically tinged investigation against the Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda.

China abruptly surfaced charges of "rape" against yet another billionaire, Guo Wengui, after he sought political asylum in the United States, where he has been making sensational accusations about the Communist Party’s leadership. 

Mr. Guo’s case could become a major test for the Trump administration’s relations with Beijing at a time of tensions over North Korea and trade.

The Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui has sought political asylum in the United States.

“China has been extending its clampdown — its choking of civil society — throughout the world, and often it is attempting this through official channels such as the U.N. or Interpol,” said Michael Caster, a rights campaigner who was a co-founder of the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group. “Unfortunately, they’re very adept at doing it.”
The Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, which provided seminars for lawyers and legal aid for defendants in China, folded last year after the country’s powerful Ministry of State Security arrested and held Mr. Caster’s colleague, Peter Dahlin, a Swedish citizen, for 23 days.
Mr. Caster noted that Interpol’s president, Meng Hongwei, is a veteran of China’s state security apparatus. 

Human Rights Watch recently reported that China was blocking the work of United Nations agencies investigating rights issues and preventing critics from testifying at hearings, including in one case the leader of the World Uyghur Congress, Dolkun Isa.
China’s economic clout has meant that few countries are willing to do much to challenge its extraterritorial legal maneuvers. 

Some have even gone along.
And countries as varied as Armenia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Kenya, Spain and Vietnam have all extradited to China scores of people accused in a spate of telephone swindles targeting Chinese citizens, even though the suspects are, like Mr. Lee, citizens of Taiwan.
“Treating Lee Ming-cheh as a mainland Chinese marks a major watershed,” said Hsiao I-Min, a lawyer at the Judicial Reform Foundation in Taiwan, who accompanied Mr. Lee’s wife from Taiwan to attend the trial.

Peter Dahlin, a Swedish citizen, was arrested in China and held for 23 days last year.

Mr. Lee’s case has added new strain in relations with Taiwan, which have soured since the election last year of a new president, Tsai Ing-wen. 

China has cut off official communications with Ms. Tsai’s government over her refusal to voice support for what Beijing calls the “1992 consensus,” which holds that the mainland and Taiwan are both part of the same China but leaves each side to interpret what that means.
In response to Mr. Lee’s legal odyssey, Ms. Tsai’s government has been relatively muted. 

“Our consistent position on this case is that we will do everything in our power to ensure his safe return while protecting the dignity of the nation,” said a spokesman for the presidential administration, Alex Huang.
China and Taiwan had in recent years cooperated on criminal investigations under a protocol that required each to notify the other in cases involving the arrests of its citizens. 

The Chinese government has recently abandoned such diplomatic niceties, officials in Taiwan say.
Taiwan’s government was notified of Mr. Lee’s arrest only when the public was — 10 days after his detainment in March near Macau, the former Portuguese colony that, like Hong Kong, is a special administrative region of China with its own legal system.
Mr. Lee, 42, assumed enormous risk to make contact with rights campaigners inside China. 

A manager at Wenshan Community College in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, Mr. Lee volunteered for a rights organization called Covenants Watch and often traveled to the mainland.
Mr. Lee’s wife, Lee Ching-yu, learned his case had come to a head when a state-appointed lawyer contacted her this month. 

She only found out about his court appearance last week in Yueyang, in the southern province of Hunan, from news reports that circulated two days later, according to Patrick Poon, a researcher at Amnesty International.

Lee Ching-yu, the wife of Mr. Lee, departing for her husband’s trial in China from an airport in Taipei, Taiwan, this month. 

According to excerpts released by the Yueyang Intermediate People’s Court, Mr. Lee entered a guilty plea. 

He appeared with a Chinese co-defendant, Peng Yuhua, and together they were accused of trying to organize protests using the social media platforms WeChat and QQ, as well as Facebook, which is banned here.
Mr. Lee told the court that watching Chinese state television during his prolonged detention convinced him that he had been deceived by Taiwan’s free news media and was wrong about China’s political system. 

“These incorrect thoughts led me to criminal behavior,” he said.
Mr. Hsiao, the lawyer from Taiwan, said none of Mr. Lee’s acquaintances had heard of the co-defendant. 

Mr. Peng testified that together they had established chat groups online and formed a front organization, the Plum Blossom Company, with the aim of fomenting change. 

Mr. Hsiao said that no such company existed.
“He was a fake,” Mr. Hsiao said of Mr. Peng. 

“This guy does not really exist. He was playing a role.”
Ms. Lee, too, denounced her husband’s trial as a farce. 

“Today the world and I together witnessed political theater, as well as the differences between the core beliefs of Taiwan and China,” she said at her hotel in Yueyang, adding that the “norms of expression in Taiwan are tantamount to armed rebellion in China.”
Mr. Lee’s case has echoes of the fate of five booksellers in Hong Kong, four of whom who were spirited out of the semiautonomous city in the fall of 2015 after publishing gossipy material about Chinese political intrigues, which, while legal in Hong Kong, is not in China.
One bookseller, Lee Bo, is a British citizen. 

Another, Gui Minhai, is a naturalized Swedish citizen; he vanished from his seaside apartment in Pattaya, Thailand, in October 2015 and returned to China in a manner that has not been fully explained. 

He appeared on state television in January 2016 and said he had voluntarily returned to face punishment for a fatal car accident in 2003. 

He remains in prison.
“What happened to my father is a much larger issue,” Mr. Gui’s daughter, Angela Gui, who has been campaigning for his release, wrote in an email. 

“It shows that foreign citizens aren’t safe from Chinese state security, even when they are outside China’s borders. I find it strange that governments aren’t more worried about China’s new self-proclaimed role as world police.”

Rogue Nation

China’s Rights Crackdown Is Called ‘Most Severe’ Since Tiananmen Square
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE

Pro-democracy activists held portraits of the detained Chinese human rights lawyers Jiang Tianyong, background left, and Wang Quanzhang at a protest in Hong Kong this summer.

GENEVA — China is systematically undermining international human rights groups in a bid to silence critics of its crackdown on such rights at home, a watchdog organization said on Tuesday. 

The group also faulted the United Nations for failing to prevent the effort, and being complicit in it.
“China’s crackdown on human rights activists is the most severe since the Tiananmen Square democracy movement 25 years ago,” Kenneth Roth, the director of the agency, Human Rights Watch, said in Geneva on Tuesday at the introduction of a report that he described as an international “wake-up call.” 

“What’s less appreciated is the lengths to which China goes to prevent criticism of that record of oppression by people outside China, particularly those at the United Nations.”
“The stakes are not simply human rights for the one-sixth of the world’s population who live in China,” Mr. Roth added, “but also the survival and effectiveness of the U.N. human rights system for everyone around the globe.”
The report highlights China’s measures to prevent activists from leaving the country to attend meetings at the United Nations, its harassment of those who do manage to attend and the risk of reprisals when they return or if they interact with United Nations investigators inside or outside China.
The report also noted barriers placed by Chinese officials to visits by United Nations human rights officials. 
Beijing has not allowed a visit by the agency’s High Commissioner for human rights since 2005, and continues to delay 15 requests for visits by special rapporteurs working on political and civil rights issues.

China allowed visits by four rapporteurs since 2005 on issues like poverty, debt and the status of women. 

But it carefully choreographed those visits, and contacts not sanctioned by the state posed risks to those involved. 

The United Nations has expressed concern that the detention of Jiang Tianyong, a prominent human rights lawyer, resulted from a 2016 meeting in Beijing with the United Nations special rapporteur on poverty, Philip Alston.
Mr. Jiang disappeared for several months and was later charged with subversion.
The report also documents China’s diplomacy in the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, where China aligns with an informal collection of states, including Algeria, Cuba, Egypt and Venezuela, that discretely coordinate their positions to deflect scrutiny of their records and consistently challenge the council’s ability to look into accusations of abuse in other states without their consent.
“It’s becoming a mutual defense society among odious dictators in which everybody understands the need to deflect criticism of you today because they may criticize us tomorrow,” Mr. Roth said.
“And China is an active, willing partner in that effort.”
Moreover, China has withheld information requested by United Nations bodies that monitor issues like torture, treatment of the disabled and children’s rights, and has tried to stop the filming and online posting of their proceedings, Human Rights Watch said.
The report also accused China of using its position on a United Nations committee that accredits nongovernment organizations to obstruct applications by civil society groups.
Individual measures by China could be passed over as unremarkable, Mr. Roth said, “but when you put it all together, what it represents is a frontal assault on the U.N. human rights system.”
Human Rights Watch delivered a copy of its report to China but received no substantive response, he said.
The effect of China’s behavior on human rights is like “death by a thousand cuts,” Mr. Roth said, but he also pointed to the dangers of “a thousand acts of acquiescence” by the United Nations and states that support human rights.
Human Rights Watch presented a copy of its report to the United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, Mr. Roth said, but Mr. Guterres’s response did not mention China by name.
“That illustrates what needs to change,” Mr. Roth said.
A request for comment from Mr. Guterres’s office was not immediately returned.
The report cited the United Nations’ treatment of the Uighur rights activist Dolkun Isa, who had received United Nations accreditation to attend meetings in its New York headquarters but was escorted off the premises by security officers without explanation.
It also cited the exceptional treatment that the United Nations accorded Chinese dictator Xi Jinping when he visited its Geneva headquarters in January: It sent home many staff members early, refused access to nongovernment organizations and granted access to only a handful of journalists.
Its handling of the occasion “was an utter embarrassment for the U.N.,” Mr. Roth said.
“It became actively complicit in Xi Jinping’s terror of any criticism. It was an utter abandonment of the principles the U.N. should abide by. It was a shameful moment.”