A Swedish court on Wednesday ordered the detention of a man suspected of spying on ethnic Uyghurs for China, Sweden’s prosecution authority said on Wednesday.
The prosecution authority declined to give more detail on the case or whether it concerned the small population of Uyghurs living in Sweden or groups elsewhere.
[…]
The man, whose nationality was also not disclosed, is in custody in the Swedish capital, court documents showed.
“The man is suspected of having illegally collected information and intelligence on people in the Uyghur environment on behalf of the Chinese intelligence service,” Prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said in a statement earlier on Wednesday.
[…]
Rights groups accuse Beijing of widespread abuses of Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority group of about 10 million people who live in China’s far western Xinjiang region.
Beijing denies any abuse and has accused Western countries of interference and peddling lies.
In 2022, a landmark United Nations report said that China’s “arbitrary and discriminatory detention” of Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity.
[…]
I know someone from Taiwan who lives and works here in the Netherlands and she told me how she and friends of her from time to time get intimidating messages and once someone even following her and she says it’s the Chinese government looking for Chinese (and Taiwanese) people publically speaking out about the situation of Taiwan or any other negative thing about China. I read and heard about this years ago but to be confirmed that Chinese (and Taiwanese) citizens are only safe in the west if they behave well. I am not surprised they also keep tabs on Uyghurs.
I once got in an argument on an hexbear post and a bunch of people made fun of me for ‘still believing in that stupid story about the Uyghurs’ posting links about all of that is a conspiracy theory and trying to give sources of how happy the Uyghurs actually are. Don’t forget there are more Chinese than Americans + Europeans, they have the money and the numbers to ‘police’ their citizens and parts of the internet.
When I was studying Japanese in Japan, almost all of my fellow students were from China. It was discreetly explained to me at one point that they cannot talk about the government or politics for fear of being brought back to China or something happening to their families, something I had not previously understood at the time (I was a young American). I had naively wanted to discuss these things and all they would ever really say when around other Chinese people was how Mao was the greatest Chinese person in history.
It’s real and it’s been going on for decades.
What do they want to do with Uyghurs in Sweden?
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) conducts the most sophisticated and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression among all countries on the globe, pressuring Chinese diaspora overseas, e.g., members of ethnic and religious minorities, political dissidents, human rights activists, journalists (and often simply the family members of these people in sort of collective punishment) by using direct attacks like renditions, co-opting other countries to detain and render exiles, mobility controls, threats from a distance like digital threats, spyware, coercion.
For example, in a new study published in February 2025, the rights group Freedom House has documented 1,219 incidents of transnational repression carried out by 48 governments across 103 countries between 2014 to 2024. A smaller number of countries account for the vast majority of all documented physical attacks on dissidents, with China the most frequent offender, responsible for 272 incidents, or 22% of recorded cases (Russia, Turkey and Egypt also rank among the worst perpetrators).
A good source for this and similar issues is also safeguarddefenders.com.
[Edit typo.]
Perhaps check if they speek about the situation in China, make life harder for them in Sweden and their family back in China, abduct them from Sweden back to China. Many aspects to think about.
That’s scary to even think about. Not being safe from an evil country an entire continent away 😰
Man, people like this are just so infuriating and pathetic. Imagine leaving your dictatorial country to a democracy just to ruin it for people there.
I don’t think these kind of spies leave their dictorial country and then afterwards decide to ruin it for others. Much more likely they left their country with the goal of tracking ‘dissidents’ already or they were pressured into doing this. Happens more often that a regime threaten or actually torture left behind family to get people far away to do what they (the regime) wants them to do.
People from autocratic countries ruining democracy for people in democratic countries.
But why? Autocratic regimes try to ruin democracies, but people fleeing their autocracies just want freedom (and often try to save their lives), they don’t ruin nothing imo.
It seems the World Uyghur Congress released a statement on the matter, to whom it may concern:
