China surveilling students abroad, including in the Netherlands: Amnesty International

Chinese authorities are intimidating, surveilling, and harassing students from China and Hong Kong who study abroad, including in the Netherlands. China wants to prevent these students from engaging in “sensitive” or political topics abroad and will threaten their family members to achieve that goal, Amnesty International said in a report published on Monday.

Amnesty International researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 32 Chinese students at universities in eight countries, including the Netherlands. A third of them said that the Chinese government has intimidated them.

Students told the human rights organization that they were photographed at demonstrations in the cities where they live and that their families back in China were threatened as a result of their activism abroad. According to students, the Chinese authorities threatened to take away relatives’ passports or even stop their pensions.

“The testimonies we collected for this study clearly show how the governments of China and Hong Kong try to silence students even though they are thousands of kilometers from home. Many students live in fear because of this,” Sarah Brooks of Amnesty International said.

One student said she attended a commemoration for the suppression of the Chinese student uprising in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. A few hours later, she heard from her father in China that the security service had contacted him. The authorities told her father to educate his daughter so that she wouldn’t attend gatherings that could “damage China’s reputation in the world.” The student said she was shocked by how quickly the Chinese authorities identified her as a participant in the commemoration and tracked down her father.

Amnesty International called it important that foreign universities take intimidation and harassment from China seriously. According to the human rights organization, universities currently have little insight into how much it impacts their students. “Universities can build up knowledge about this phenomenon,” Amnesty International said. “It is also important that lecturers know how to deal with it and that there is a reporting point where students can turn.”

“The Chinese authorities’ attack on human rights takes place in the corridors and classrooms of the many universities where students from Hong Kong study,” Brooks said. “The impact of this transnational repression by China is a serious threat to the free exchange of ideas that underpins academic freedom. Governments and universities must do more to combat this.”