This new report by Safeguard Defenders goes beyond the few individual cases reported on occasionally in the past, delving deep into their foreign operations and blowing the lid on the use of so-called “voluntary” returns… by any means necessary. Download the report here, click the thumbnail, or check out the Publications tab. “Any means” is to be taken literally. Legally sanctioned methods under the PRC’s National Supervision Law range from detaining family members back in China, to sending police overseas on secret missions to intimidate targets into returning, to outright kidnappings abroad.
As the research shows, formal legal procedures such as extraditions play an almost non-existent role in the claimed success rate of the Sky Net campaign. Instead, these involuntary returns (IR) account for the vast majority of Sky Net’s track record: in 2018, IR stood for some 64% of the claimed successful returns, while extradition – the appropriate judicial channel for such returns – represented but 1%.
