The Vancouver police department in British Columbia, Canada, is working with the Chinese embassy to encourage Chinese nationals studying in the city to report crime – warning them that they are prime targets for extortion, given that many are wealthy and may drive expensive cars.
It has released a YouTube video in Mandarin urging students to report crime and explaining that there are many Chinese-speaking police officers they can turn to. Extortion and kidnapping of Chinese students has occurred, occasionally, in various international student destinations and the CBC TV news report highlights one such case in Canada in 2009 in which a million pound ransom was demanded.
The TV report says that the Vancouver police department is now taking a pro-active step to ensure students remain safe and feel safeguarded, highlighting that there are now 20,000 Chinese students in the province of British Columbia.
The city’s police department also has a Chinese community policing centre; one police officer in the report was keen to rebuff claims made by suspects in one case to victims that the Canadian police would not be as interested in crime involving international students.
Ziggy Hui, studying IT at Simon Fraser University, is quoted in the clip saying that like him, he felt many Chinese students would not know who to turn to in if in need.
