China has increased the use of bans on leaving the country, specifically to “intimidate foreign journalists,” according to a report released Tuesday by a human rights group.
Since 2018, there have been at least four cases of foreign journalists “attacked or threatened with exit bans”, including correspondents for Britain’s BBC and Australia’s ABC public broadcasters, Safeguard Defenders said.
The Madrid-based non-governmental organization (NGO) said it believes the possible application of exit bans on journalists is part of “Beijing’s hostage diplomacy, retaliation or a tactic to extract concessions from a foreign government.”
In other cases, “family members are often held hostage in China with exit bans to force” the return of suspected economic criminals or political activists, including human rights defenders, according to the report.
Safeguard Defenders gave the example of Daniel Hsu and siblings Cynthia and Victor Liu, US citizens who were prevented from leaving China for several years “to force their parents, suspected of economic crimes”, to return to the country.
“Dozens of foreigners are also prevented from leaving China if they work for a company involved in a civil dispute,” the organization said.
Irish businessman Richard O’Halloran was prevented from leaving China for more than three years, between 2019 and 2022, “although he was not even working for the company when the dispute broke out.” [comercial] started,” the report says.
Safeguard Defenders believes that “tens of thousands of people in China” cannot leave the country. “Many of these exit bans are illegitimate and violate the principle of freedom of movement,” the group said.
In 2021, activist Guo Feixiong was prevented, already at the airport, from leaving China to see his wife, Zhang Qing, who had been hospitalized in the United States with cancer, “for reasons of national security,” the NGO said.
In September, Safeguard Defenders also accused China of maintaining 54 clandestine police stations abroad, including three in Portugal (Lisbon, Porto and Madeira).
The NGO said that these centers are used to pressure and threaten dissidents, control fugitives from China and seek their return to that country.
At the time, China acknowledged that it maintains “guard stations” abroad, denying the exercise of “police activity.”
At the end of October, the Attorney General’s Office guaranteed that the investigations by the Central Department of Criminal Investigation and Action were ongoing in the case of the alleged illegal operation of “Chinese police stations” in Portugal.
Source: TSF
