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Lawyers call on the United States to release a Chinese democracy advocate from immigration detention. They fear that he will be deported to his country of origin to face false accusations, after China has given him a “red notice” via the Lyon-based Interpol organization.
Human rights activists say this is one of the few cases in which China has used the International Criminal Police Organization’s (Interpol) “red notice” system to try to force the return of fugitives from the United States.
Under this system, a member country of the international police consortium can ask other countries to arrest and return fugitives living abroad. It is not known how often, if ever, this tactic led the United States to hand over detainees to Chinese authorities.
A search of the Interpol website shows that there are currently 28 Chinese nationals wanted by China under an Interpol “red notice”.
Target dissidents
The man in question was arrested in June and is being held in a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center. The Associated Press is withholding the man’s name because a brother still living in China said he was threatened by government agents with criminal charges unless his brother returned to the country.
The ICE said it arrested the man for exceeding the length of his visa and did not say whether the Chinese charges led to his detention. But lawyers for the man say China is exploiting the immigration system to circumvent US efforts to combat Beijing’s targeting of dissidents. The man and his immediate family seek asylum in the United States.
A Red Notice published in January accuses the man of being the ringleader of a plot to make illegal profits from a mining company and recruit former prisoners to attack a suspected enemy. The man’s lawyers say other documents from the Chinese legal system show he is charged with crimes that have already been linked to others.
Manipulated
“There are countries that abuse Interpol’s red notice system, including China,” said John Sandweg, one of the man’s lawyers.
Sandweg, former acting director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, said the agency risked being manipulated by Red Notices and becoming “a tool to continue the persecution of activists and respectful dissidents laws”.
According to his lawyers, the man was a village head when Chinese authorities sought to seize a friend’s house for a planned industrial park. The man says he allowed the villagers to demonstrate peacefully and helped the friend directly protest against the central government.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington and Interpol did not respond to requests for comment.
“What the ICE doesn’t fully understand is that an Interpol Red Notice from China is highly political and not a reliable indicator of actual criminal activity,” Yaqiu said. Wang, Chinese researcher with human rights group Human Rights Watch.
China is aggressively pursuing the repatriation of people it considers opponents of the Communist Party leadership, including people living in the United States, in what US officials have called extralegal campaigns to harass and track down targets.
A federal grand jury this month indicted nine people over allegations that they served as agents in “Operation Fox Hunt,” which the Chinese government has called an effort to track down corrupt officials and criminals. abroad. The Justice Department called Operation Fox Hunt “extralegal” and alleges that those charged “monitored and launched a campaign to harass, track down and coerce” those wanted by Beijing to return to China.
Interpol president demoted
Interpol came under fire in 2016 after a top Chinese official, Meng Hongwei, was elected president, with a warning that China was newly asserted.
His four-year term was cut short when he disappeared in 2018 during a visit to China from France, where he and his family had moved, when he was posted to the organization’s headquarters in Lyon.
Meng eventually resurfaced to plead guilty to fraud charges and was sentenced to 13 years in prison. His wife, who was granted asylum in France with their children, said she believed Meng had been a victim of political persecution.
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