Alarming new footage of a battalion of Chinese police officers in Fiji escorting hooded suspects onto a private plane has exposed the authoritarian nation’s secret push for power in the Pacific.
The footage, which was filmed by a Chinese security agency and obtained by 60 Minutes, shows dozens of Chinese police smashing down doors and arresting almost 80 young male and female alleged cyber scammers in Fiji.
The alleged offenders are then hooded, handcuffed and sat in the middle of row upon row of Chinese cops as they are flown back to China on a charter jet.
‘No matter how far away, They [criminal suspects] will be arrested,’ a translation of the accompanying Chinese captions reads.
The footage, which was filmed by a Chinese security agency and obtained by 60 Minutes, shows dozens of Chinese police smashing down doors and arresting almost 80 young male and female alleged cyber scammers in Fiji (pictured)
The alleged offenders are then hooded, handcuffed and sat in the middle of row upon row of Chinese cops as they are flown back to China on a charter jet (pictured)
Fijian police simply watch on as the arrests were made under a controversial policing deal between Suva and Beijing, which critics claim shows the extent of China’s pernicious influence in the region.
While the footage was filmed in 2017, n National University China specialist Graeme Smith said up to two of these types of ‘rendition’ exercises were happening each week.
‘It’s a very disturbing path because these sorts of operations [involving Chinese authorities] are happening all over the world,’ Mr Smith told 60 Minutes.
‘Our team estimated this is happening twice a week, every week, all over the globe, but the Pacific example is a pretty concerning one.’
Fiji’s prime minister Sitiveni Rabuka (pictured) told 60 Minutes the South Pacific could be destabilised by China’s ‘unwarranted influence’
Mr Smith, who first unearthed the terrifying vision, said it showed Chinese cops ‘behaving as though they are in China’.
‘The Fijian police are there, but only really in the background, and they are, to all intents and purposes, treating Fijian soil as Chinese soil,’ Mr Smith said.
‘It is absolutely a ceding of sovereignty and… a very bad precedent that was set.’
The police operation completely by-passed Fiji’s own legal system and the alleged offenders were taken to China to face ‘justice’ in the Communist country’s murky court system.
The Chinese embassy in Fiji told said ‘the law enforcement and police co-operation between China and Fiji is professional, open and transparent’.
The police operation completely by-passed Fiji’s own legal system and the alleged offenders (pictured) were taken to China to face ‘justice’ in the Communist country’s murky court system
Pacific island nations, like Fiji, have found themselves at the centre of a fierce battle for influence from and the US on one hand, and China on the other.
China failed to sign up 10 nations to a region-wide security treaty last year so has instead chosen to focus on striking individual deals with them.
But Fiji’s prime minister Sitiveni Rabuka told 60 Minutes the South Pacific could be destabilised by China’s ‘unwarranted influence’.
‘I understand and America, and I do not fully understand China’s agenda,’ Mr Rabuka said.
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