Interpol and French authorities are investigating the sudden disappearance of the Chinese Interpol president Meng Hongwei.
Photo: AFP
On October 4, Meng was reported missing to the French authorities by his wife Grace. Meng’s wife reported that she had not had any contact from her husband since September 25, when he had made a routine business trip to China from the Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France. The last message she received from him was a text message saying, “wait for my call” followed by a knife emoji,which she took as a sign that her husband believed his life to be in danger. Since her husband’s disappearance she has also received threatening phone calls, one of which was an anonymous man who stated, “You listen but you do not speak … we’ve come in two work teams, two work teams just for you.” The caller also claimed to know her – and her children’s – location. The French authorities have since placed the family under police protection.
On October 7, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security issued a statement claiming that Meng was detained immediately upon entering China, and is being held under house arrest at an undisclosed location in Bejing. China claims Meng, who is also China’s vice-minister for public security, is under investigation for allegations of “accepting bribes and suspected violations of laws”. The investigation is being overseen by the newly created National Supervision Commission (NSC), which was formed in March this year with the responsibility of investigating corruption in the Chinese government. Meng Hongwei’s detention and investigation is part of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s administration’s crackdown on corruption within its Communist Party. Since 2012 Xi Jingping’s regime has investigated and punished over a million party members, many of whom received lengthy jail sentences.
Human rights groups, including the group Human Rights Watch, are labelling Meng’s disappearance and detention as an example of the Chinese policy called Liuzhi. Liuzhi replaces a previous interrogation practice, Shuanggi, which was exposed as containing numerous human rights violations when investigated by Human Rights Watch. These violations included, “arbitrary and long-term incommunicado detention, solitary confinement, and torture”. Liuzhiis an effort by China to show it is using legal forms of detention and interrogation and is meant to include notification for the family within 24 hours of the detention member,as well as video taped interrogation sessions which provide more transparency. However, in Meng’s case neither the family or Interpol were notified of the allegations against Meng, or that he had been detained.
Interpol, which is the international policing organisation consisting of members from 192 countries and whose objective is to help find fugitives or missing persons, has submitted a formal request to the Chinese government to produce information on the location and physical condition of Meng Hongwei, who resigned his position at Interpol shortly after his disappearance. Interpol and French authorities have classified his disappearance as “disturbing”, especially given the details of the final text to his wife, as well as the threats the family has received since his disappearance.
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