Europe’s highest court refuses to extradite criminals to China

Suspension

Years ago, the European Court of Human Rights held the first-ever trial in a case involving extradition to China – and the decision, made just weeks ago, is extraordinary, best likened to an undetected earthquake. The consequences will be felt across Europe, not just the European Union.

The European Court of Human Rights is the court established by the European Convention on Human Rights. It’s a treaty legally binding on all of its 46 member states, which includes all of Europe except for Belarus and, since this year, Russia, which has been expelled after refusing to follow one of its decisions. It is the highest court of its kind for nearly 700 million people in its member states.

So how can one case, one decision, be so influential? It’s all about the person in his heart, a Taiwanese citizen named Liu Hongtao.

Safeguard Defenders and I, personally, have been fighting deportations from Europe to China for years, almost like an ambulance cruising through Europe to provide expert legal advice and court appearances to stop them. We are pleased to be able to say that most of them have succeeded, including in the higher courts. However, it is merely putting out the fires and not addressing the basic process that makes these requests from China possible.

Despite the EU Parliament’s eight calls for all EU members with such treaties to suspend them, there has been no actual move to do so in these countries, whose political cowardice means no one will act – unless the EU as a whole acts first. Instead, a single ruling by the European Court of Human Rights rendered all extradition requests from China meaningless, as no case can succeed after this precedent-setting decision.

It’s not a total victory, and a bigger push is still needed to suspend actual treaties, but it’s a major blow to China’s attempt to use European nations to undermine its commitment to the rule of law.

Liu is an alleged scammer and cyber scammer who lived in Spain with a large number of Chinese and Taiwanese. The episode was dismantled in a joint Spanish-Chinese operation, and Spain soon agreed to hand over to Spain 208 captured Taiwanese, largely ignoring a review of their legal obligations before doing so. However, Leo left Spain and was arrested in Poland more than half a year later, in mid-2017. Since then, he has been languishing in a Warsaw detention center for more than five years awaiting his final decision. He is neither Tibetan nor Uyghur, nor does he belong to a persecuted religious group. Nor is he an opponent, human rights advocate, or open critic of China or the Chinese Communist Party. He is allegedly just an ordinary white collar criminal. These are precisely the cases in which China has achieved the most success in seeking extradition to the mainland.

For this reason, the European Court of Human Rights’ decision is likely to make any extraditions, regardless of the accused, impossible. The decision is quite clear that torture and ill-treatment in China are so prevalent that criminals cannot be extradited, as it violates Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The defense also wanted it to be considered impossible by the lack of a right to a fair trial (Article 6), but since the Court had made such a clear decision on Article 3, it chose not to review this claim. This was a missed opportunity, because a clear decision on Article 6 could have been a final nail in the coffin. However, it is an important victory that will make extradition almost impossible.

Ongoing issues in Cyprus and Italy are next in line, and this decision will likely play a major role in their denial as well. Then, the next step, given that extradition is not feasible at all, is to get the magistrates’ ministries of European countries to stop allowing extradition at all, because such requests, even when the defense is certain to succeed, can, as in the case of Liu’s case, continues to lead to dire consequences, as he spent more than five years in custody. It shows how fragile the rule of law and basic rights are even in a place like Europe. In fact, the court also decided that Poland itself had violated his right not to be placed in arbitrary detention, in further criticism against the Polish authorities.

After a great decision, a great day for the rule of law and human rights in Europe, it is now up to the local media in these countries to put pressure on the Ministries of Justice and Foreign Affairs on this matter, to ensure that prosecutors stop pursuing extraditions, and to create the political will in parliaments to suspend these treaties Final.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Epoch Times.

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Peter Dahlin is the founder of the NGO Safeguard Defenders and the co-founder of the Beijing-based Chinese NGO China Action (2007-2016). He is the author of Trial By Media and a contributor to The People’s Republic of the Missing. He lived in Beijing since 2007, until he was arrested and put in a secret prison in 2016, then he was deported and banned. Before living in China, he worked for the Swedish government on gender equality issues, and now lives in Madrid, Spain.

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