cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/56159234
Op-ed by Reza Hasmath, Professor in Political Science, University of Alberta, Canada.
On July 1, China brought into force its Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, converting a decade of Xi Jinping’s doctrine of “forging a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation” into binding law.
Most attention has gone to its domestic machinery: entrenching Mandarin over minority languages, unified state textbooks and “inter-embedded” neighbourhoods engineered to dilute concentrations of Uyghurs and Tibetans among the Han majority. In other words, this is an assimilationist project that’s already far advanced.
The provision that matters most to the world outside China is buried near the end. Article 63 declares that organizations and individuals outside Chinese territory who “undermine ethnic unity” or “create ethnic division” shall be pursued for legal liability.
The Chinese government is therefore asserting, in statute, that its authority follows its critics across oceans into other countries, including Canada, home to some of the world’s largest Chinese, Uyghur and Tibetan diaspora communities. The danger is not that the law reaches across borders. It is what it criminalizes, whom it targets and how it’s enforced.
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The intimidation inherent in the new law already violates many domestic harassment and foreign interference laws in jurisdictions around the world. Prosecutors, here, should use them against the agents carrying out the coercion, not the exiles who are its victims.
Governments should shut the unlicensed “police stations,” and press Interpol to reject politically motivated notices aimed at diaspora activists.
Governments can also build dedicated channels for those targeted: a clear law enforcement contact, protective guidance for Chinese and minority diaspora communities and training for officers who could mistake transnational repression for an ordinary domestic dispute.
Finally, asylum systems should treat Article 63 as evidence: a statute in which China announces that diaspora advocacy invites retaliation is close to proof of persecution for those seeking to flee.
China has every right to legislate for its own territory and citizens. What it cannot legitimately do, however warmly it speaks of unity, is disregard borders. The task for all nations, Canada included, is to insist, in law and in practice, that borders still exist.
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How many of the people operating these unlicensed police stations have been charged and arrested for kidnapping or attempted kidnapping? The people working these are members of an organized crime outfit. They need to be treated as such. Yet whenever I hear of them being shut down, the thugs working them just seem to get deported.
If you're gonna roll up to a Chinese embassy and start arresting people based on spurious BS and believing your own propaganda, I don't get why you don't just say to launch the nukes and try to get first strike. If you're gonna start WWIII for literally no reason, why not just do it instead of all this bizarre posturing?
Maybe I should just start running a police station out of my house, arresting people on crimes I've invented, and imprison them in my basement.
If you're doing law enforcement with no legal authority, you're literally just kidnapping people.
I imagine that if you did that, there'd probably be, you know,
evidence.Maybe my neighbor is doing exactly what you said. I guess I should just call in a SWAT team to kick in his door based on that possibility.