If you’re a Chinese national living outside of China and being targeted by the Chinese Communist Party—perhaps even, at its behest, by Interpol—it might be a good idea to change your name and move to a new location.
Anton Stravinsky of Amicus International Consulting suggests that organizations like Amicus can offer “lawful identity transformation and second-country protection” for victims of transnational repression. “When your home country uses global tools to pursue you for your beliefs, your identity becomes either your shield or your weakness” (“China’s Long Arm: Using Interpol to Silence Dissidents Abroad,” Newstrail.com, June 11, 2025).
Interpol
One of the global tools of repression that China—and other countries—use is Interpol, which Britannica describes as an “intergovernmental organization that facilitates cooperation between the criminal police forces of more than 180 countries.” Interpol supposedly focuses on three forms of criminal activity: “terrorism and crimes against people and property…economic, financial, and computer crimes… and illegal drugs and criminal organizations, including organized crime.”
However, Interpol also cooperates with requests of member countries for “red notices” that target dissidents for being dissidents and members of persecuted groups who are simply trying to escape persecution. Red notices are international calls “for the arrest and extradition of specific individuals.”
Since 2015, observes Stravinsky, China has instigated hundreds of red notices targeting “Uyghur Muslims who fled to Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Western Europe; Hong Kong democracy activists now living in the U.S., Canada, and the UK; Falun Gong practitioners; whistleblowers in business and government circles; exiled authors, artists, and journalists.”
Countries like the U.S., the UK, Germany, and Sweden have blocked extraditions or provided asylum to dissidents tagged with red notices; the European Parliament has called for reform of Interpol to prevent its political misuse. But “in countries with weak asylum laws or close economic ties to China, such as Cambodia, Thailand, or the UAE, individuals flagged by China face swift detention and extradition.”
A new life
One of Stravinsky’s examples of persons helped by Amicus is a Uyghur academic who had published papers on the Chinese government’s treatment of Muslims in the Xinjiang region of China. In 2019, while she was living in Berlin, German authorities briefly detained her because of a red notice. But they realized the political motivation behind it and let her go.
Then Amicus helped her to “change her legal name through a court process in a European country, obtain permanent residency in a third country, remove her old image and digital identifiers from open databases, [and] secure encrypted communication channels for family contact.” Now, says Stravinsky, she’s safe.
Also see:
Journal of Democracy: Weaponizing Interpol
