Italy ‘turns a blind eye’ to China’s secret police offices
Rome is the ‘weak link’ in efforts to combat global network set up by Beijing ‘to intimidate dissidents’
‘In Italy, China has been effective at inserting itself into society, from media to the universities’
ITALY has been accused of turning a blind eye to secret Chinese “police stations” set up in cities across the country, allegedly to intimidate and harass Chinese migrant communities.
A report this week by Safeguard Defenders, a human rights organisation, claims Beijing has established more than 100 offices in 53 countries as part of a global network to target Chinese dissidents living abroad.
Italy was reportedly used as a testing ground for the scheme and is said to be home to 11 – the most in any one country. Locations are said to include Milan, Rome and Sicily.
But while countries such as the UK, Germany, Spain, the US, Canada and New Zealand have announced national investigations into the claims, Italy’s interior minister attempted to brush off the issue, saying police and intelligence services were “monitoring” the issue.
Matteo Piantedosi insisted only one credible “police station” had been discovered – in Prato, Florence – but that it had closed. The lacklustre response has led to accusations that Italy is the weak link in European efforts to counter covert Chinese influence.
The minister’s remarks were “very disappointing”, Laura Harth, campaign director of Safeguard Defenders, told The Sunday Telegraph. “Italy has been particularly reluctant to act,” she said.
She was particularly critical of Mr Piantedosi’s comments about the Prato “station” having recently shut down. “It’s easy to close down one address but the underlying networks are still operative. I’m sure they will lie low for a while,” she added.
The “police stations” are housed in Chinese business and cultural association, Safeguard Defenders said in its report. In Britain, locations allegedly include London (Croydon and Hendon) and Glasgow. Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, said last month that such activities “must be stopped”.
Beijing claims such outposts are simply administrative offices set up during the pandemic to help Chinese people living abroad renew their driving licences and passports. “Chinese public security stations ... strictly abide by international law and fully respect the judicial sovereignty of other countries,” Wang Wenbin, the Chinese foreign affairs spokesman, said recently.
Critics accuse Beijing of using the offices to intimidate and keep tabs on political opponents abroad, and “persuading” some accused of “crimes” to return to China to face justice.
The operation, known as “Fox Hunt”, has seen Beijing conduct 11,000 such forced returns worldwide between 2014 and 2022, Safeguard Defenders claims.
One case occurred in Prato, which has a large Chinese population working in clothes manufacturing. A Chinese man, identified only as “WJ”, had lived there since 2002 but was “convinced” to return to China in 2015 to face alleged criminal charges. He has not been heard of since, according to Espresso, an Italian news weekly.
Many such repatriated people end up in “re-education camps”, according to Riccardo Noury of Amnesty International in Italy. He accused Western countries of closing their eyes to human rights abuses in the pursuit of trade with Beijing.
Such commercial ties are particularly prominent in Italy, which exports goods worth £11 billion, from fashion to food, to China annually.
But the close relationship goes deeper than just money. In 2015, Italy agreed to joint patrols with Chinese police in its major cities, ostensibly to provide assistance to Chinese tourists. The patrols were suspended in 2020 because of the pandemic but the agreement remains in place.
“In Italy, Chinese authorities have been effective at inserting themselves into so many aspects of society, from companies to the media and the universities. It’s very widespread and pervasive and it goes back many years,” said Safeguard Defenders’ Ms Harth.
The police patrol deal appears to have provided the impetus for Beijing to pilot setting up the network of clandestine “police stations” in Italy.
Italian politicians are demanding that the government come clean on any deals with Beijing.
And Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commission, said this week that she was troubled by the reports of covert Chinese influence across Europe.
“If it is shown that these claims are true, for us it would be unacceptable that any third country should exercise some sort of extraterritorial jurisdiction in the territory of a member state of the EU without its agreement,” she said.