BCB in Brief: ABC report on China’s transnational repression
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What happened
On 13 May, the ABC’s Four Corners broadcast a former Ministry of Public Security (MPS) officer’s first-hand account of China’s efforts to monitor, intimidate, and rendition Chinese government critics in Australia and globally.
Among other acts of repression against members of Chinese diaspora communities, the reporting documented MPS plots to lure dissidents to South-East Asia with the goal of forcibly returning them to China.
The story included details of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) unwittingly facilitating what appears to have been an extrajudicial rendition of an Australian resident to China in 2019. The Chair of Australia’s Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, Peter Khalil, described this incident as “deeply disturbing.”
