EU demands answers over employee arrested in China

A spokeswoman for the bloc said the Chinese national has been in detention since September 2021 and it has not been told the reason
A report in a French newspaper says the employee has been charged with ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’ – a catch-all charge used to target dissidents

China-EU relations

Finbarr Berminghamin Brussels

Published: 9:42pm, 29 Apr 2022

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A Chinese citizen working for the European Union has been arrested in China, Brussels said on Friday, adding that it is “concerned for his well-being”.

The Chinese national was detained in September 2021 and EU representatives have not been given any information about the charges against him.

“We can confirm that a local agent of the EU delegation in China has been arrested and detained since September 2021 and we are concerned for his well-being,” Nabila Massrali, the EU’s spokeswoman for foreign affairs, said.

“Despite multiple requests on our side to the Chinese authorities, we have so far not been informed either of the allegation(s) nor of the specific charge(s) he faces. We will continue inquiring until we get a proper answer.”

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The case was first reported by French newspaper Le Monde, which named the employee as An Dong who worked in the IT department of the EU delegation in Beijing. The report said he was being held in Sichuan province, thousands of kilometres west of the capital.

The newspaper claimed that the reason for his detention was “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – a catch-all charge or “pocket crime” that has been used by Chinese authorities against human rights activists and dissidents for a wide range of activities.

It was the charge used to arrest Zhang Zhan, one of the few citizen journalists in China to report on the early experiences of people in Wuhan during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. She was sentenced to four years in prison in Shanghai in December 2020.

According to Le Monde, the EU wrote to China’s foreign ministry in October, using a form of diplomatic communication known as a “note verbale”. They asked the ministry to investigate and explain the detention, and to ensure their employee had access to a lawyer of his choosing, rather than a court-appointed representative.

It represents a rare case of an employee of a Western diplomatic mission being arrested in China.

A former employee of the British consulate in Hong Kong was detained in China in 2019 on a charge of “soliciting prostitution”. Simon Cheng Man-kit, a Hong Kong citizen, claimed he was tortured after being detained for 15 days on a business trip to the mainland.

In 2020, he was granted political asylum in Britain. Beijing accused Cheng of inciting political unrest during Hong Kong’s protest movement, charges he denied.

Former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig was detained in China in 2018 under espionage charges, along with compatriot Michael Spavor.

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Both men were subsequently given prison sentences but were released and returned to Canada last September, following the release of the Huawei Technology executive Meng Wanzhou from detention in Vancouver, Canada.

The latest case comes at a testy time for EU-China relations. European diplomats and officials have openly criticised China’s stance on Russia’s war on Ukraine, accusing it of giving tacit support to Moscow’s claims.

European business figures, meanwhile, have become openly critical of the country’s zero-Covid policy, which has left many foreigners enduring tough lockdowns in Chinese cities, disrupted supply chains and restricted the movement of staff into China.