Five people were charged with stalking and harassing Chinese residents in the United States under the instruction of Beijing's intelligence service. Washington bulls them as actions of "transnational repression" against those who are not aligned with the Communist regime.
Rome (AsiaNews) - The United States Department of Justice has dismantled a Beijing spy network that targeted Chinese dissidents living on US soil. The five accused had stalked and harassed the victims, as well as collected information on Hong Kong, Tibetan, Uyghur and Taiwanese activists.
US authorities state the suspects were acting on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, Beijing's intelligence agency. Three of them are under arrest, while two are still on the run. The US investigators have not mentioned the names of the victims, but it is not difficult to figure out who they are.
In one of the cases, Lin Qiming is accused of persecuting Xiong Yan, a former student leader who took part in the Tiananmen Square riots of June 1989, which were later bloodily suppressed by the Chinese authorities. After retiring from the US army as a chaplain last September, he announced his intention to run for Congress.
The Justice Department alleges that Lin, who is still at large, hired a private investigator to sabotage Xiong's election campaign. The alleged Chinese spy allegedly instructed the detective to "find" a prostitute who could approach Xiong, and as a last resort to "beat him up".
Another of the suspects is Qiang 'Jason' Sun, an employee of a technology company based in China. He allegedly instructed Fan "Frank" Liu and Matthew Ziburis to spy on dissidents and spread negative information about them. With Fan Liu, supposedly the president of a media company, Qiang Sun set up fake interviews to discredit and humiliate the victims.
A former prison officer and bodyguard in Florida, Ziburis posed as an art dealer interested in buying the works of a dissident artist, Chen Weiming. Ziburis installed surveillance cameras in the victim's studio and a GPS tracker in his car. Qiang Sun could access the images and location data from China.
Chen Weiming is known for creating a sculpture called 'the CCP Virus', which depicts Chinese President Xi Jinping 'as a coronavirus'. Ziburis had paid an advance for the work, which was vandalised a month after its completion.
US skater Alysa Liu, who took part in the recent Winter Olympics in Beijing, was also a target of Ziburis. The father of the Chinese-American athlete, Liu Jun, was a student leader in Guangzhou (Guangdong) during the 1989 democratic uprisings.
The latest suspect is Wang Shujun, accused of collecting information on Hong Kong activists (later arrested), Tibetans, Uighurs, and Taiwan independence supporters. The Justice Department report said Wang posed as a sympathiser of the democracy movement. He would meet with activists and then report the details of conversations, activities, phone numbers, and their contacts to 007 in Beijing.
Wang was the general secretary of the Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation for a decade. Hu and Zhao were reformist leaders in 1980s China. Jim Li, chairman of the foundation, was stabbed to death in his office in New York by a client on 14 March.
Jim Li had demonstrated in Tian'anmen Square; after the crackdown the Chinese authorities imprisoned him. He became a lawyer once he arrived in the United States. The artist Chen Weiming had hired him to sue Ziburis, who had broken the contract to buy the CCP Virus sculpture and then disappeared.
"Transnational repression harms people in the United States and around the world and threatens the rule of law," said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen, a member of the Justice Department's National Security Division. Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry, said he had no news of the US operation and that the transnational repression charge was "unfounded".