The group organizes nationalist demonstrations and will also monitor and pressure critics of the Chinese government. There will be similar squads in dozens of other countries.
An international investigation revealed that Portugal may have been target of a clandestine network linked to Chinese authorities. According to , around two years ago, an FBI team went to Lisbon to alert the Judiciary Police (PJ) about the existence of an alleged illegal Chinese “police squad” in New York with possible links to the Portuguese capital.
According to US authorities, two Chinese citizens detained in the United States were involved in coordinating surveillance, intimidation and coercion of dissidents by Xi Jinping’s government. The clandestine structure, installed in Manhattan, would have served to organize pro-Chinese government demonstrations, as well as to facilitate informal trials and forced repatriations of opponents.
The FBI also suspected that there was logistical preparation for replicate this model in Lisbon. However, after realizing they were under investigation, the suspects allegedly destroyed relevant evidence. The case led the PJ, through its National Counterterrorism Unit, to open an investigation in Portugal, also driven by complaints from the NGO Safeguard Defenders, which in 2022 identified around a hundred of these structures in more than 50 countries.
During the investigation, Portuguese authorities analyzed the behavior of two Chinese citizens residing in Lisbon, with profiles similar to those detained in the USA. These individuals organized demonstrations of a nationalist nature and maintained contacts with official Chinese entities. One of them even displayed a document identifying him as a “liaison officer” at an overseas Chinese police station.
Despite the suspicions, the investigation faced significant difficulties. The PJ highlighted the closed nature of the Chinese community as an obstacle to the collection of evidence, which ended up leading to the case being closed without formal interrogations of the suspects. Still, the Portuguese authorities keep the case open to new elements that could justify its reopening.
The topic was also mentioned by the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) in the Annual Internal Security Report, warning of possible control and pressure actions exerted by non-democratic States on foreign communities.
