It is a tower between two restaurants in Chinatown, avenue de Choisy, in the 13e district of Paris. The residential building is nothing special, except to consult the website of the police of Fuzhou, a large city in southeastern China: the address is listed there as one of the two offices in France local police forces, with another in a commercial area along the A4 motorway in Noisy-le-Grand (Seine-Saint-Denis). The press release Fuzhou Police of January boasts the opening of thirty “110 overseas service posts”reference to the Chinese emergency police number.
An organization fighting against human rights violations, Safeguard Defenders, spotted in September the existence of these informal offices in Europe, and in particular in France, which otherwise could have gone unnoticed. The identification of two posts in Rotterdam and Amsterdam has since caused a stir. Dutch police have opened an investigation, followed by those in Canada, Portugal and Germany, while Irish authorities have ordered the closure of an office in Dublin.
Contacted by The worldthe French Ministry of the Interior did not want “go into the details of what the specialized services monitor”. He simply clarified: “the DGSI [direction générale de la sécurité intérieure] deploys very significant (and increasing) resources to monitor the action of foreign state services or structures likely to come into conflict with our own sovereignty. Each time an initiative likely to be in contradiction with our laws is detected, the Minister has given instructions that it gives rise to an immediate reaction. We will not tolerate such practices taking place on national territory.”
Search for fugitives
In addition to the lack of registration as a consular representation, it is the use that the Chinese authorities could make of these annexes which worries. Because Beijing has prided itself in recent years on having managed to force many former officials or businessmen fleeing abroad to return to the country and has also put pressure on sensitive communities, in particular the Uighurs in exile, summoned, through relatives under police threat in the Xinjiang region, not to go to demonstrations in Europe.
In Paris, the police annex is backed by a pre-existing organization, the Association of Fuzhou in France, located in the tower. “We do not carry out police missions, it is a misunderstanding”, defends an official of this association. He says he has lived in France for more than twenty years and has French citizenship. “It is just in case, for example, a Chinese could not have returned to China to renew his driving license because of the Covid: we can organize the telephone appointment. We only help by putting in contact”he assures.
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