The presence of several offices supposed to facilitate the work of Chinese police testifies to the extraterritorial practices of Beijing. The use that could be made of these worried informal structures.
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It is a tower between two restaurants in the Chinese district, avenue de Choisy, in the 13 e arrondissement of Paris. The residential building is not special, except to go and consult the fuzhou police website, a large city in south-eastern China: the address is listed as one of the two offices in France Local police forces, with another in a commercial area along the A4 motorway in Noisy-le-Grand (Seine-Saint-Denis). The Fuzhou Police press release from January boasts the opening of thirty “service posts 110 abroad”, reference to the Chinese Police Number.
A organization of combating human rights violations, Safeguard Defenders, spotted in September the existence of these informal offices in Europe, and in particular in France, which if not could have gone unnoticed. The identification of two positions in Rotterdam and Amsterdam has since made a big splash. Dutch police have opened an investigation, followed by those in Canada, Portugal and Germany, while the Irish authorities ordered the closure of an office in Dublin.
Contacted by Le Monde, the French Ministry of the Interior did not wish to “enter into the details of what specialized services ensure follow -up”. He simply specified: “The DGSI [Directorate General of Internal Security] deploys very important (and croissants) means to ensure the follow -up of the action of the services or foreign state structures likely to come and hit our own sovereignty. Once an initiative likely to be in contradiction with our laws is detected, the Minister has given as an instruction that it gives rise to immediate reaction. We will not tolerate that such practices take place on national territory “.
Fugitive search
In addition to the absence of registration as a consular representation, it is the use that the Chinese authorities could make of these worries that worries. Because Beijing has boasted in recent years of having managed to force many former officials or businessmen to the foreigner to return to the country and also put pressure on sensitive communities, especially Uighur in exile, Somed, through relatives under the police threat in the Xinjiang region, not to go to demonstrations in Europe.
In Paris, the police appendix joined a preexisting organization, the Fuzhou association in France, located in the tower. “We do not provide police missions, it is a misunderstanding,” defends an official of this association. He has said he lived in France for over twenty years and have French citizenship. “This is just in case, for example, a Chinese could not have returned to China to have his driver’s license renewed because of the covid: we can organize the telephone appointment. We only help by putting in contact, “he says.
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