The Chinese Government has a long history of abusing its power, both outside of and within INTERPOL. The United States Department of Justice recently issued a press release discussing agents of the People’s Republic of China(PRC) being charged with a bribery scheme in an effort to bribe a purported IRS official at the direction of the PRC.
In light of this new information and China’s repeated abuse of legal processes, the question of its continued status as a Member Country of INTERPOL is an appropriate one.
In part one of this series, we addressed two examples of China’s abuses of power:
As recognized here in a Euronews article, the Chinese government often utilizes INTERPOL’s Red Notice system as a tool of transnational repression to target activists and dissidents. The article’s authors are Ben Keith and Rhys Davies, UK-based barristers, who predict that:
“Unless the system is reformed — with proper checks and balances put in place to weed out politically motivated Red Notices before China and other repressive states weaponise them — the system will continue to lose credibility.”
Their point is a valid one. Politically motivated Red Notices have been a long-standing issue that INTERPOL has addressed with varying degrees of success. NGOs and media outlets such as Human Rights Watch, Sky News, and more recently, The China Project have reported on the need for supervision of China’s Red Notice requests due to China’s use of INTERPOL to persecute dissidents, political opponents, and ethnic and religious minorities.
INTERPOL’s General Secretariat already provides a legal review of all Red Notices prior to their publication. These examples make clear that INTERPOL must increase the vigilance of its screening process of Red Notices from China and other member countries with a history of abuse.
As always, thoughts and comments are welcomed.
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