Welcome back to the podcast, Bride, Swindler, Steel.

I'm Alexandra Rogge, and today we're talking about Chinese shadow police stations around the world,

including one in New York and three in Toronto.

These are discussed in a recent report by Safeguard Defenders, a foundation headquartered in Spain.

Our guest today worked on that report. Laura Harth is a political activist for human rights and the

rule of law with a focus on China. Laura, thank you for joining me.

Alexandra, thank you for having me.

Just right from the beginning about these fake police stations, can I call them fake?

Is there any legitimate policing being done at these?

Yes, so we prefer to call them clandestine or illegal in a way.

Now the name that's being used by the authorities in China that have set this up is overseas

police service centers in general.

There is some variation on that

name, but they are very much, let's say, centers with police functions in the sense that they are

requested to assist the public security authorities back in China with certain cases. So I wouldn't

necessarily use the word fake to describe them. We described them as clandestine

and illegal because these services have been set up without the agreement of the host government,

for example, in Canada, but also in most of the other jurisdictions, the 53 jurisdictions

that we're talking about. Now, it is important to highlight, obviously, maybe when, you know,

people usually, when they hear the word police obviously, maybe when, you know, people usually,

when they hear the word police station, they might think of physical buildings with police

agents, possibly jail cells, interrogation rooms. That's not what we're talking about here.

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