China has increased its use of exit bans, notably to “intimidate foreign journalists”, according to a report released today by a human rights group.
Since 2018, there have been at least four cases of foreign journalists “targeted by or threatened with exit bans”, including correspondents for the British BBC and Australian public broadcasters ABC, Safeguard Defenders said.
The Madrid-based non-governmental organization (NGO) said it believes the potential application of exit bans to journalists is part of “Beijing’s hostage diplomacy, a retaliation against or a tactic to obtain 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 crimes or political activists, including human rights defenders, the report said.
Safeguard Defenders gave the example of Daniel Hsu and brothers 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 being barred from leaving China if they work for a company involved in a civil dispute,” the group said.
Irish businessman Richard O’Halloran was barred from leaving China for more than three years, between 2019 and 2022, “although he was not even working for the company when the [trade] dispute broke out,” the report said.
Safeguard Defenders believes that “tens of thousands of people in China” are blocked from leaving 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”, said the NGO.
In September, Safeguard Defenders had 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 “police stations on duty” abroad, denying the exercise of “police activity”.
At the end of October, the Attorney General’s Office guaranteed that investigations by the Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action were underway in the case of the alleged illicit operation of “Chinese police stations” in Portugal.
