By Mathilde Régis of Lyon Capitale
Published on 05/04/2017 at 18:42
The father of the Chinese democracy movement, Wei Jingsheng, is in Lyon to express his fears about the election of the president of the international police organization who is a Minister of Public Security in China and also in charge of secret police for the Chinese Communist regime.
The election of Meng Hongwei as head of Interpol after the election of Donald Trump in the United States did not make headlines. Yet, the concern is palpable among Chinese dissident refugees abroad. “The collaboration between Interpol and the Chinese government is similar to what happened with Nazi Germany. It is the duty of the Chinese dissidents to denounce this, ” said Wei Jingsheng, who spent eighteen years imprisoned and tortured for having dared to writer an article on the Democracy Wall in Beijing in 1979, calling for the democratization of China.
Indeed, in June 1940, Reinhard Heydrich, a head of the SS, became the boss of Interpol. Today, the world’s largest international police organization, based in Lyon, has 190 countries as its members.
Privileged Access to Sources
Released in 1997, thanks to pressure from the international community especially that of then US President Bill Clinton, Wei Jingsheng fears that the tracking of Chinese refugees in the foreign land will be as “terrorists” and “criminals”. “The appointment of Meng Hongwei as head of Interpol allows the Chinese government to expand its records and get to access of sources it did not have before. Normally, when living under a dictatorship, one can flee abroad. But with this appointment, I fear that all the police will collaborate with the Chinese government,” he warns.
A concern of all the Chinese dissidents is that they will receive a categorical refusal from Interpol on the possibility of establishing a dialogue between Interpol and opponents of the Chinese regime. He also recalled that in the 2000s he was detained by the Geneva police while on his way from a UN Human Rights conference. The interpreter who accompanied him translated what the Swiss policemen said: a notice from Interpol classified him as a “terrorist”. It was only after the police discovered Wei Jingsheng’s official accreditation to the UN Human Rights conference, the Swiss police let him free.
“China Has the Power of Money”
According to Wei Jingsheng, the election of the deputy minister of Public Security in China as head of Interpol is primarily linked to economic reasons. “Interpol and the Chinese government have been cooperating for a long time, and Western governments have no objection.” In the face of China’s economic power, Western governments prefer to flatter Chinese officials. The money and the financial contribution of the Chinese government to Interpol is increasingly high,” he notes. He has strong suspicions of corruption at an Interpol meeting in Beijing before the election and seeing parallels to the great anticorruption campaign desired by Xi Jinping that is very oriented towards personalities whom the Chinese Communist Party would like to get rid of.
