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Interpol Names Chinese Police Official as Its New President
Interpol Names Chinese Police Official as Its New President
(about 5 hours later)
BEIJING — A top Chinese police official was elected president of Interpol on Thursday, setting off alarm bells among rights activists over the potential misuse of the police organization to attack Beijing’s political opponents.
HONG KONG — Interpol has chosen a top Chinese security official as its new president, raising alarms from human rights groups concerned that the appointment will lead to abuse of the global police organization’s powers to issue international arrest warrants.
Vice Public Security Minister Meng Hongwei became the first Chinese official to hold the position. He was named to the post at the organization’s general assembly on the Indonesian island of Bali, Interpol said in a news release.
The official, Meng Hongwei, a vice minister of public security, was elected president by the group’s general assembly, Interpol announced on Thursday. His appointment is effective immediately as he replaces Mireille Ballestrazzi of France, the organization said in a statement.
Interpol, the international police organization based in Lyon, France, has 190 member nations and the power to issue “red notices,” which are comparable to international arrest warrants. Interpol circulates those notices to member countries listing people who are wanted for extradition.
While the job of Interpol’s president is limited in scope, the announcement was met with disdain by human rights groups. Authoritarian governments like Russia and China have been known to abuse Interpol’s “red notices,” tantamount to international arrest warrants, to hunt down political enemies. China’s law enforcement agencies have shown little regard for international borders in recent years, spiriting away political opponents from places like Thailand and Myanmar.
While Interpol’s charter officially bars it from undertaking “any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character,” critics say some governments, primarily those in Russia and Iran, have abused the system to harass and detain their opponents. Interpol says it has a special vetting process to prevent that from happening.
“The appointment of Meng Hongwei is alarming given China’s longstanding practice of trying to use Interpol to arrest dissidents and refugees abroad,” Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia director at Amnesty International, said in a statement. “It seems at odds with Interpol’s mandate to work in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
Mr. Meng said that he was taking over at a time when the world was facing some of the most serious global public security challenges since World War II.
Interpol’s constitution prohibits “any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.” But that did not stop Russia’s government from issuing an international arrest demand through Interpol for a political opponent.
“Interpol, guided by the best set of principles and mechanisms to date, has made a significant contribution to promoting international police cooperation,” Mr. Meng said in a statement. “Interpol should continue to adhere to these principles and strategies, while further innovating our work mechanisms in order to adapt to the changing security situation we see today.”
In January, Nikita Kulachenkov, a Russian forensic accountant, was handcuffed and sent to a detention center in Cyprus. He was wanted by Russia for the theft of a piece of street art worth $1.55. It has been reported that Mr. Kulachenkov had worked with a Kremlin opponent, Alexei Navalny.
Interpol’s president is a largely symbolic but still influential figure who heads its executive committee, which is responsible for providing guidance and direction and fulfilling decisions made by its general assembly. Interpol Secretary-General Jurgen Stock is the organization’s chief full-time official and heads the executive committee.
“There now needs to be close scrutiny of the kind of notices that Interpol issues at the request of the Chinese government,” Mr. Bequelin said.
Mr. Meng, who takes over from Mireille Ballestrazzi of France for a four-year term, will assume his new duties immediately.
The day-to-day operations of Interpol are run by the secretary general, Jurgen Stock, who is from Germany. From 2000 to 2014, Interpol’s secretary general was an American.
His election comes as President Xi Jinping of China is seeking to give new momentum to his four-year-old campaign against corruption, including a push to seek the return of former officials and other suspects who have fled abroad. China filed a list of 100 of its most-wanted suspects with Interpol in April 2014, about one-third of whom have since been repatriated to face justice at home.
The president, elected to a four-year term, presides over meetings and “provides guidance and direction to the organization and oversees the implementation of decisions made by the General Assembly,” the group said in a statement.
The anticorruption drive is led by the Communist Party’s internal watchdog body, the highly secretive Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, rather than the police, prompting questions about its transparency and fairness.
Interpol had a checkered beginning. Founded in the 1920s as the International Criminal Police Commission and based in Vienna, it fell under control of the Nazis during World War II. It was reconstituted after the war, according to its website. Since then, most of its presidents have been from democracies. It is now based in Lyon, France, and has 190 member countries.
More than one million officials have been handed punishments ranging from lengthy prison terms to administrative demerits or demotions. While the authorities deny that their targets are selected for political purposes, several of the highest-profile suspects have been associated with Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, and other rivals.
“We currently face some of the most serious global public security challenges since World War II,” Mr. Meng said in a statement following his selection at an annual meeting of the group in Bali, Indonesia. “Interpol, guided by the best set of principles and mechanism to date, has made a significant contribution to promoting international police cooperation.”
China’s police and judicial systems have been routinely criticized for abuses, including confessions under torture, arbitrary travel bans and the disappearance and detention without charges of political dissidents and their family members. That has prompted reluctance among many Western nations to sign extradition treaties with China or return suspects wanted for nonviolent crimes.
Next year’s general assembly will be in Beijing.
China also stands accused of abducting independent book sellers who published tomes on sensitive political topics from Hong Kong and Thailand. American officials have previously complained that China has asked for the return of corruption suspects while providing little or no information about the allegations against them.
Mr. Meng is a top official in the world’s biggest internal security force, tasked with clamping down on dissent and maintaining stability in an authoritarian, one-party state. Mr. Meng’s ministry arrests and interrogates political dissidents like the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, rounds up suspected separatists in restive areas such as Xinjiang, and arrests people protesting against environmental pollution or official corruption.
Given those circumstances, Mr. Meng’s election is an “alarming prospect,” said Maya Wang, a Hong Kong-based researcher with Human Rights Watch.
Mr. Meng, who turns 63 this month, is deeply immersed in Communist Party politics, in contrast with most police officials in Western nations, who are expected to be apolitical on the job.
“While we think it’s important to fight corruption, the campaign has been politicized and undermines judicial independence,” Ms. Wang said. Mr. Meng’s election “will probably embolden and encourage abuses in the system,” she said, citing recent reports of close Chinese ally Russia’s use of Interpol to attack political opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin.
In his public statements, Mr. Meng has made it clear that he places the politics of the Communist Party above any other considerations, as would be expected of any senior Chinese official. Speaking in October 2014, Mr. Meng told police officers preparing to go to Syria to put “politics first, party organization first and ideological thinking first.”
“This is extraordinarily worrying given China’s longstanding practice of trying to use Interpol to arrest dissidents and refugees abroad,” Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s regional director for East Asia, wrote on Twitter.
Lu Kang, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters on Thursday that China had expressed its “heartfelt thanks” to Interpol member states for Mr. Meng’s election. “China will continue to support Interpol with all its strength and will continue to support Interpol’s work, to deepen cooperation with member states on cracking down on multinational crimes, and to build a good and safe environment for prosperity and development for every country of the world.”
At the same time, China’s three-decade-old economic boom has produced waves of embezzlement, bribery, corruption and other forms of white-collar crime that have forced the government to spread a wide net to track down suspects and their illicit earnings. China also says it faces security threats from cross-border extremist Islamic groups seeking to overthrow Chinese rule over the far-western region of Xinjiang.
Interpol member countries nominate officials for the post of president. Presidents are elected in a vote by members on a one country, one vote basis. There was one other candidate for president, but the vote is always closed and results are not released publicly.
Along with electing Mr. Meng, Interpol also approved a call for the “systematic collection and recording of biometric information as part of terrorist profiles” shared by the organization.
About 830 police chiefs and senior law enforcement officials from 164 countries joined in the four-day general assembly. China became a member in 1984.
