China has accused Canada of tarnishing its reputation after Canada’s federal police announced this week it was launching an investigation into alleged Chinese “police agencies” operating covertly in the province of Quebec.
At a press conference on Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said Canada “should stop sensationalizing and hype the matter and stop attacking and slandering China”.
“China strictly adheres to international law and respects the judicial sovereignty of all countries,” Mao said.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said Thursday it had launched an investigation into two “secret police stations” believed to be working on behalf of the Chinese government in Montreal and the nearby suburb of Brossard, Quebec.
“The RCMP recognizes that Canadians of Chinese descent are victims of alleged activities carried out by these centers,” RCMP sergeant Charles Poirier said in a statement. reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
“These activities and any form of harassment, harassment or harmful attacks against communities or diasporas in Canada will not be tolerated.”
Mao, the spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, did not comment on the existence of the police stations and whether they were operated by Chinese government agencies.
Safeguard Defenders, a Spanish human rights organization, said China has dozens of such stations around the world, including in the United Kingdom and the United States.
In a report last September, it said the stations were used to “harass, threaten, intimidate and force targets to return to China for prosecution”.
In October, the Dutch foreign ministry said it was investigating reports that the Chinese government had set up illegal police stations in the Netherlands to intimidate dissidents. Beijing called those reports “absolutely false”.
China’s foreign ministry has previously described the foreign outposts as gas stations for Chinese people who are abroad and need help with bureaucratic tasks, such as renewing their Chinese driver’s licenses.
Tense relationships
Speaking to reporters in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the presence of Chinese police stations in Canada “is of great concern to us”.
“We have been aware of the (presence of) Chinese police stations around the country for months and we are making sure that the RCMP is following this up and that our intelligence agencies are taking this seriously,” he said on Thursday.
Still, the latest allegations have added pressure on Trudeau, who has been receiving increasing calls for months to investigate allegations that the Chinese government has interfered in the country’s elections.
In November, Canadian media outlet Global News reported that Canadian intelligence officials had warned Trudeau that China was “targeting Canada with an extensive campaign of foreign interference,” including meddling in the country’s 2019 election.
Last month also The Globe & Mail reported that “China employed a sophisticated strategy” to disrupt the 2021 Canadian election, “while Chinese diplomats and their proxies supported the re-election of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals … and sought to defeat conservative politicians perceived as unfriendly to Beijing” .
“The full extent of the Chinese meddling operation is exposed in both classified and top-secret documents from Canada’s Security Intelligence Agency,” the newspaper said.
Trudeau knew Beijing was meddling in our elections and did nothing to stop it.
He only seems to care about protecting himself and his party.
Call now for an open, public, independent public inquiry: pic.twitter.com/1ObEtBVBHO
— Pierre Poilièvre (@Pierre Poilièvre) March 9, 2023
Relations between China and Canada have been frosty for several years, especially after Canadian authorities detained Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou in 2018 on a US arrest warrant. China subsequently arrested two Canadians on espionage charges.
Although the standoff ended when all three people were released in 2021, relations have remained sour over several points of contention, including human rights and trade.
For example, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in November, Chinese President Xi Jinping was caught on video chastising Trudeau for allegedly leaking an earlier meeting in which the Canadian prime minister expressed “serious concerns” about the alleged interference.
“Everything we discussed was leaked to the newspaper; that is not appropriate,” a smiling Xi told Trudeau through an interpreter in the footage, which was published by Canadian broadcasters.
Trudeau calls for investigation
This week, Pierre Poilièvre, leader of Canada’s Conservative Opposition Party, called for an “open, public, independent public inquiry” into allegations of Chinese election interference.
“Trudeau knew that Beijing was meddling in our elections and did nothing to stop it,” Poilièvre wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “He only seems to care about protecting himself and his party.”
Trudeau has said he will appoint an independent special investigator to investigate alleged election interference by China. The special rapporteur would be an “eminent Canadian” and would have the authority to make recommendations on foreign interference, including a public inquiry, the prime minister said on March 6.
Trudeau has also asked legislators from the parliament’s national security watchdog, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), to launch an investigation and report its findings to lawmakers.
In addition, the Prime Minister has asked another oversight body, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA), to conduct an investigation into how Canada’s national security services have dealt with the threat of foreign election interference, particularly “around the flow of information from national security agencies to decision-makers”.
On Friday, the Canadian government also started consultations on its plan to introduce a registry for foreign agents.
“We are at a critical juncture when it comes to the security of our democratic institutions,” Public Security Secretary Marco Mendicino said at a news conference in Ottawa.
“And now we are taking another step to protect them,” he said, adding that the purpose of the register is to promote transparency regarding legitimate lobbying activities of foreign states.
(TagsToTranslate)News
