Chinese Ambassador criticizes Swedish police behavior

The Chinese Ambassador to Sweden has criticized Swedish police for allegedly treating three tourists violently in Stockholm in early September and causing an outrage in China.

The Chinese tourists were treated rudely by police in a country that claims to prize human rights and justice, Gui Congyou, Chinese Ambassador to Sweden, told Aftonbladet on Sunday.

“We cannot understand and feel astonished,” Gui was quoted as saying by the Stockholm evening newspaper.

In the past, Gui said, every day there would be on average two cases involving Chinese tourists “being robbed of their passports and wallets in Stockholm.” Victims reported their cases to local police, never received a response and not one case was ever cleared up, Gui said.

The embassy has asked all related departments in Sweden, Gui said, but most replied they were not responsible.

“Good luck and goodbye,” were the last words Swedish police said to a Chinese tourist who alleged to the Global Times that he had received rough treatment from them. The man surnamed Zeng refused to give his full name.

He said they left him and his parents at a graveyard at midnight.

According to the alleged Chinese victim, he and his parents traveled to Stockholm in the early morning of September 2.

The room they booked was not available for check-in until later in the day.

Considering the health of his parents, the man asked hotel staff if he could pay a fee so his parents could rest on some chairs in the lobby.

The hotel refused and called the police to take the three away. The police allegedly left them in a graveyard, a key focus of online debate.

A video clip went viral online where the man and his mother were recorded making an emotional plea at the hotel as police took them away.

Thousands of Chinese net users and a Swedish passer-by who videoed the scene suggested the man was play-acting.

The comments on the internet were “tearing me to pieces,” Zeng told the Global Times on Sunday night. Net users only saw “a very small part of the whole incident,” he said.