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Sweden has arrested a man suspected to have “engaged in refugee espionage” on Tibetan refugees, for an unnamed foreign power, the Swedish intelligence service SAPO said on March 6. “The arrested man is suspected of having, at the request of another country, illegally gathered information about people in the Tibetan community in Sweden,” SAPO said in a statement.
“Refugee espionage is a method to try to prevent refugees from expressing criticism of the regime in the country they have fled. It is also a way for the regime to try to get control over who has fled from home,” the agency statement continued, “The information has been passed on to intelligence officers working for a foreign power”. The man was arrested on February 26.
SAPO would not disclose his name or nationality, nor which country he was working for or where in Sweden he was spying. SAPO refused to say whether the foreign power involved was China.
Beijing says it “peacefully liberated” Tibet in 1951 and considers it an inseparable part of China. According to Swedish news agency TT, the suspect has lived in Sweden for several years.
The country’s security service also assured that the agency has been “actively working” to prevent and combat the refugee espionage occurring in the country.
Shocked over the news of them being the subject of espionage, Nyima Sherlho kangsar, head of the organisation Tibetan Community in Sweden, told Sveriges Radio, a Swedish radio channel, “We, the Tibetans in Sweden, have a good community but it will now be broken when you hear such terrible news that there has been espionage (against us)”. Over 130 Tibetans live in the country.
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