The event of the infiltration of the European political arena by the Chinese Communist Party has surfaced once again. According to the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, a local town councilor in Belgium has been found to have close ties with Chinese officials, even agreeing to report on a colleague who supports the human rights of the Uyghur people to the Chinese side, leading to warnings and being twice summoned by the national security agency.
The councilor in question is Eric Dosogne from the small town of Huy in the southeastern part of Brussels. Intelligence agencies discovered that he agreed to monitor his colleague Samuel Cogolati’s activities during phone calls with Chinese officials.
Cogolati is the co-chair of the Belgian Green Party (Ecolo) and a former member of parliament. In 2021, when he participated in a proposal condemning the Chinese government’s human rights abuses against the Uyghurs, it was revealed that his computer was hacked by Chinese hackers. The Belgian State Security Service (VSSE) recently spoke to Dosogne regarding the incidents and warned him to be cautious of the surveillance risks from Beijing.
Dosogne did not respond to inquiries from Le Soir and other local media outlets but through a statement, he emphasized that he had never discussed Cogolati with Chinese officials and admitted that he has never hidden his support for China, as long as it does not violate his respect for human rights and minority groups as a socialist.
Dosogne, who used to be the mayor of Huy, visited Nanjing in 2017 and participated in a forum on human rights and museum studies, where he praised China’s progress in human rights and openly stated to the local Belgian media, La Meuse, that the trip was sponsored by the Chinese Embassy in Belgium.
According to Le Soir, Yeunten Ling Institute in Huy is one of the largest Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Europe, where the Dalai Lama has visited five times, being bestowed with the title of honorary citizen during his last visit in 2012, which caught the attention of Chinese officials.
An official from Huy at that time told Le Soir that after the Chinese government’s representatives exposed the invitation for the Dalai Lama’s visit to Huy in 2012, they visited the town, praising China as a great country and expressing the importance of maintaining friendly relations with Belgium. They then requested that Huy cancel the invitation to the Dalai Lama, a demand that was refused.
In 2023, there was also a case where former Belgian federal senator Frank Creyelman was recruited by Chinese intelligence units, accepting Chinese requests through hundreds of text messages, including discussions on issues such as Europe’s stance on China’s crackdown on Hong Kong democracy and persecution of Uyghurs, as well as disrupting a conference on Taiwan. Each case involved receiving bribes of 10,000 euros (approximately 340,000 New Taiwan Dollars) through encrypted cryptocurrencies.