This article is part of the China Targets project, an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) involving 42 media partners, including The Irish Times, into transnational oppression by Chinese authorities. See also: An intimidated Chinese citizen in Ireland and Exerting control from a nondesctipt office on Capel Street.
One hundred and five people in 23 countries outside China who said they were targeted by the Chinese authorities over recent years were interviewed as part of the China Targets project, an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) involving 42 media partners, including The Irish Times, into transnational oppression.
Half of the people interviewed for the project, which is focused on China, said family members in that country had been intimidated or interrogated by the police or state security officials. Several said the intimidation began just hours after they had taken part in protests or public events in their host countries that the Beijing regime did not approve of.
Sixty of the interviewees – many of whom did not want to be identified – believed they had been followed or were surveilled in their adopted countries, and 19 said they had received suspicious emails or experienced hacking attempts.
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The interviewees included Chinese and Hong Kong political dissidents as well as members of the Uyghur and Tibetan communities.
Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington DC, told the ICIJ in a statement that allegations against China of transnational repression were “groundless” and “fabricated by a handful of countries and organisations to slander China”.
“There is no such thing as ‘reaching beyond borders’ to target so-called dissidents and overseas Chinese,” he said.
Geneva
The China Targets investigation was told by human rights activists and lawyers based in Geneva, where the headquarters of a number of UN bodies including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights are based, that they believed they were being surveilled, harassed or intimidated by people they believed were Chinese diplomats or Government proxies, including delegates from non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
The UN grants thousands of NGOs consultative status, which carries certain privileges, on the expectation that they act without government interference.
But an ICIJ analysis of 106 such NGOs from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan found that 59 were closely connected to the Chinese government or the Chinese Communist Party.
“It’s corrosive. It’s dishonest. It’s subversive,” said Michèle Taylor, who served as US ambassador to the Human Rights Council from 2022 until earlier this year.
China-backed groups “are masquerading as NGOs” as part of a broader effort by Beijing “to obfuscate their own human rights violations and reshape the narrative around China’s actions and culpabilities,” she told the ICIJ.
How the Chinese government monitors its citizens in Ireland
The Chinese government stands alone in the seriousness of the threat it poses to the global human rights system, said Kenneth Roth, who ran Human Rights Watch for nearly 30 years.
“To deter condemnation of its severe repression, foremost its mass detention of Uyghurs, Beijing has proposed to rewrite international human rights law,” he said.
Liu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, did not directly respond to questions about Beijing’s deployment of NGOs at the UN in Geneva. Instead, Lui wrote in an email to the ICIJ that China had contributed “constructively to global human rights governance”.
“At the international level, China has put forward a series of proposals at the UN Human Rights Council on promoting human rights through co-operation and development, and on advancing economic, social, cultural rights as well as the rights of specific groups,” he wrote.
Interpol
The China Targets investigation found evidence that China is abusing Interpol, the international network for facilitating worldwide police co-operation and crime control.
The ICIJ and media partners found China was pursuing dissidents, powerful business figures and Uyghur rights activists using the Interpol system, in apparent violation of the organisation’s rules.
Many targets of the Chinese security services only found out they were the subject of Interpol red notices – requests for someone’s arrest pending extradition – when they were stopped at border controls at countries that act on the basis of notices issued at the request of the Chinese police.
Ireland does not have an extradition treaty with China. It suspended its extradition treaty arrangements with Hong Kong in 2020 following the Beijing regime’s crackdown on political freedoms in the former British colony that year.
Protests outside China
During at least seven of the 31 overseas visits of Chinese president Xi Jinping between 2019 and 2024, local law enforcement infringed on protesters’ rights so as to shield the Chinese leader from expressions of opposition, including by detaining or arresting activists, the China Targets investigation found.
The Xi visits where the ICIJ investigation found local law enforcement interfering with the right to protest were: France (twice), India, Nepal, Kazakhstan, Thailand, and Serbia.
[ Government urged to raise Uyghurs with visiting Chinese foreign ministerOpens in new window ]
In February, when the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, visited Ireland and met Taoiseach Micheál Martin, An Garda Síochána did not interfere with the small group of Uyghur protesters who gathered outside the gates of Government Buildings on Upper Merrion Street, or the small number of protesters from the Falun Gong religious group who gathered on the pavement opposite the gates.
However, when the line of cars carrying the visiting Chinese minister and his entourage were leaving, a number of Garda vehicles pulled up alongside the Falun Gong protesters opposite the gates so the anti-Chinese Communist Party banners they were holding could not be seen by the Chinese leader as he was being driven away.
(International Consortium of Investigative Journalists/Colm Keena)
