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tv   DW News Asia  Deutsche Welle  December 12, 2022 5:30pm-5:46pm CET

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so migrants verified and reliable information for my grants. how many portion of lunch now in the world right now, the climate change, very half the story. this is much less the way from just one week. how much work can really get we still have time to out. i'm dealing with subscribe all morning like this is eat up the news asia coming up to date, the long arm of chinese law operating illegally across the world. and your claims paging is running a network of police stations across more than 50 countries to target alleged criminals and dissidence. but how could this network grow so wide? and what governments, ignorant of chinese plans and hong kong media mobile jimmy and i handed
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a prison tom again, major calls of justice, his lawyers call it legal harassment. ah, my british manager, welcome to did up the news. asia ledger to join us. germany says china is operating to illegal police stations on it's to treat these set ups don't have a fixed office and i run by private individuals from the chinese diaspora. the aim to collect information on chinese dissidents and citizens in exile and pass that on to be jing, it's about on that's come to light across the world. and only a report by madrid based in geo safeguard defenders claimed there are more than a 100 such police stations in at least $53.00 countries most exist illegally an aim to monitor coerce, and in some instances,
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repatriate those beijing considers criminal or anti china. a run of the mill convenience store, an innocuous office unit in the suburbs, and a residential home like any other. just some of the unremarkable places alleged to be woven into a vast secret network of chinese overseas police stations. in a new report, spanish and your safeguard defenders reveal evidence of b. jenks clandestine operation. they see it's used to harass and intimidate the chinese diaspora. and the scale is breathtaking. at least 100 such police stations in 53 countries worldwide. in canada, alone, there are thought to be 4 i for many years that there are consistent engagements by representatives of the chinese government
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into a canadian communities with local media lab reports of illicit chinese police stations. these are all things that we continue to be concerned about with our officials. i stay active on and that we will continue to be vigilant around to keep canadian sex. the issue came to the for at last month g. 20 summit in bali. justin trudeau told journalists he reached his concerned with chinese president. she jin ping. she scolded his counterpart over the incident. everything with personally that all the way over he will be jing says the overseas police network is to help citizens process paperwork or to crack down on corruption in 2019 chinese law enforcement began officially
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working in cambodia since then hundreds of chinese citizens accused of telecom fraud had been reported without due process the f b. i says that the latest revelations, however, mark an illegal expansion of china's police state. as we have seen, a clear pattern of the chinese government, the chinese communist party exporting their trans dear repression right here into the u. s. and we've had now a number of indictments that you may have seen of the chinese engaging in uncoordinated law, quote unquote, law enforcement action right here in the united states harassing stockings, surveilling, black mailing people who they just don't like or disagree with the, the she regime the u. s. and a number of european countries including germany, have now opened investigations into the allegations of chinese,
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foul play on their soil. and for more context of this, i'm joined by laura hearth. she's a campaign director at n g o. save god defenders and joins me from rome. miss hop welcome. who is running these illegal police station? i mean, are we talking of chinese spies? diplomats police parsons. thank you for having me. from what we gathered from the chinese authorities themselves and from chinese media reports on this subject, which is the exclusive basis of, of our reporting on this. so we only use that. i wish to highlight this open source material available online from chinese authorities, local authorities, and the media itself. so what we see from their statements is that these so called overseas police service centers or police linkage centers, they have different names depending on what local jurisdiction is. running them
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where set up by the local public security bureaus, we identified 4 of them in close cooperation with the united front work department . so it appears that these have been set up on top of, let's say, an existing network of united front organizations and people tied to those organizations around the world. so we have no reason at this time to believe that people were brought into countries to exercise these functions that these are, you know, traditional spies or public security agents. we cannot exclude that, but we have no evidence at this point that this would be the case. it really seems that they are using existing networks, united front networks that have been there to build this extra function on either merge or a function, but isn't the element of legality here as well. for instance, china does. her joint police patrolling arrangements with countries like italy, serbia, and crucial, surely will you stations are
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a part of the deal on thing. i don't think they're part of the deal or day they shouldn't be. there is this to writing responses to that. we see, for example, that when it comes to the service stations, and so we need to also and diversify a bit between the different functions. so one part of the functions of the so called service stations is in helping in the renewal of passports, driver's licenses. so more traditional counselor tasks. now, while these are worrying also because if run by united front on networks and obviously we know that these are instruments that have been used in transmission repression efforts from the chinese communist party. but in general, these kind of consular services might be legal if and only if. and when the host government consented to set up of such, let's call them counselor outposts of from what we gathered. that seems to be the case. for example, in south africa, that does not seem to be the case. however,
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in countries such as italy, croatia, or others where there are agreements on join police patrols, but which is something completely different. and for example, in italy, we've now started to get some responses from the interior minister who clearly stated that this was not part of the deals. so obviously we see from the chinese side, from their statements that they used these joint police patrols to set up these kind of stations that they could get. they claim that the stations are one of the biggest achievements of those are doing police patrols, but they do not seem to be part of what the government consented to said that there's a lot of different things going on here. but it must be clear that in a majority of countries where we found them, because there was no express agreement by to whose governments, even on the so called administrative counselor task the are, these are fully clandestine. and i don't think any government really, even the south african authorities, have denied that they consented to the policing activities that the stations these networks have been involved in your organization. uncovered this network using
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publicly available sources, open source material, essentially presume of movers or something of a government could have done as world war governments slacking. look when it comes to see we came across the stations because we are mapping and tracking the trans national repression efforts from the chinese communist party. and in particular the what we call involuntary returns. so both the legal and illegal methods that the chinese communist party and it's state bodies used to bring people back to china at all costs. so as we were tracking these, we also came across the set up of the stations as a part of these efforts of trans national repression and trans national policing. could governments have come across this. they probably should have, especially in some cases, for example, in ireland, where there was a clear sign outside the door of the building actually saying, you know,
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which i'll overseas police service center. so it's a bit worrying that that doesn't happen. but i would say that goes to a deeper underlying issue, which is, i think in most countries still there's a lack of awareness, lack of willingness, lack of sense of urgency in investigating encountering these trans national repression efforts coming from the chinese communist party. but i would say also the awareness and willingness to a front confront counter the wider influence and interference operations run by among others these united front work department networks. so we hope that this kind of investigation will finally open the eyes of various governments around the world . that this is something that really needs to be countered and hopefully they will do so in a coordinated way to learn from each other and to set up a common framework to counter these efforts. laurel halt reliever group and to so much for joining us over. ah,
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hong kong court has sentenced mediate icon. jimmy lie to nearly 6 years. imprisonment over fraud lie is arguably the highest profile target of china's campaign to stamp out hong kong pro democracy movement. his lawyers have called the multiple cases against him. an example of legal harassment. a fresh body blow to hong kong struggling democracy movement. media mogul, jimmy lie receives another jail sentence of nearly 6 years after being found guilty of fraud in a contract dispute over renting out part of his office. it seems hardly the stuff of high politics, but his latest sentence is merely a precursor to much more serious judicial proceedings. lie potentially faces a life sentence at his upcoming trial and national security charges. this wide ranging law has been used to jail. most of hong kong political opposition lie who marked his 75th birthday imprison last week is the founder of the now closed apple
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daily newspaper. he had just completed a 20 month jail term for taking part in anti government protests in 2019. that triggered a crackdown on descent. a birdie citizen ly chose to stay in hong kong and face charges he by leave. i, we, we totally disgraced myself. i cannot do that, you know, if i leave law only at disgrace myself, i discredited epoch daily and also undermined to solidarity of democratic movement . is something i have to take responsibility. critic say beijing security legislation effectively means the end of the rule of law in the once free wheeling city drawn at legal campaign against ly has sparked concern about press freedom. several pro democracy media outlets of sheltered after the introduction of the national security law. lie wanted
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a prominent london base lawyer to represent him in the upcoming case. however, hong kong leader john lee caught you, asked china to bar a foreign lawyer from a national security trial. even though local courts had approved the move, beijing promise to allow hong kong to retain political and media freedoms for 50 years. when it took the former british colony back in 1997. increasingly, however, beijing's rules are making hong kong no different from a mainland city. and that's it for to very frontier to more of the same time with people in trucks injured when trying to flee the city center more and more refugees are being turned away. families lead on inferior to these critical illness with demonstrated people seeing screen
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ross getting 200 people had a juicy around the world. more than 300000000 people are seeking refuge. yes. why? because no one should have to flee. make up your own mind. d. w, made for mines ah, ah, securing food in an ever more insecure world. you agriculture ministers meet in brussels to discuss the many crises facing of the industry. still reeling from the pandemic, a summer drives onto the impact of high energy costs. we ask what's next for
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european farmers also coming up camp sites in denmark, philip as people flee the high cost of heating or this winter on the great expectations. india's largest winemaker, 311 yards, go public on hope that economic growth will what the nations us ties for life minor things. this is the w business. i'm paid ferguson, thanks for joining me. e. agriculture ministers are meeting in brussels to discuss the state of the food and fishing industries across the block. the gathering takes place against the backdrop of russia's war in ukraine, which has caused major disruption to food supply chains and contributed to storing energy prices. a common site in grocery stores across europe, rising prices for vegetables spread and everything else. after 2 decades of 1.5 percent inflation prices this.

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