Eight hundred and fifty years ago, the merchant Michele Dagomari made the dangerous journey home from Jerusalem to the small town of Prato in Italy, with the greatest of all treasures. Each night, the angels of heaven would gather over his bed, to guard the green girdle, ornamented with gold thread and tassels, that had once been worn by the Virgin herself. The one thief who dared to steal it, legend holds, was captured after he become enveloped in a mysterious fog, The thief’s hand was amputated, before he was tied to an ass’s tail, and burned at the stake.
Five minutes walk away, on the Via Degli Orti del Pero, a darker kind of angel now guard the secrets of Prato. The Fuzhou Overseas Police Station, operated by the People’s Republic of China—one of over 100 unofficial centres human rights monitors fear are being used to coerce dissidents and spy on immigrant communities—works from a nondescript office, outside the framework of the law.
Eleven of these illegal police stations are in Italy alone—the only member of the Group of Seven advanced economies, which signed on to President Xi Jinping’s controversial Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Earlier this year, a report by Spanish NGO Safeguard Defenders found that Fuzhou police stations were running from Barcelona to Buenos Aires, sparking investigations by 14 governments.