Two New York residents have been arrested and charged with conspiring to act as agents for China's government and operating an undeclared Chinese police station in Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood, the U.S. attomey for the Eastem District of New York said in a statement.
“The Department of Justice Monday announced a trio of cases charging Chinese security officials with operating as agents of the Chinese government and in transnational schemes related to censoring Chinese dissidents and democracy activists.
United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace said the three cases show the People's Republic of China engaged in a campaign to protect its authoritarian worldview and extend the reach of its system into the United States.
The first complaint charged two individuals for acting as agents of the Chinese government in connection with operating an illegal overseas police station of the Chinese government.
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| A six story glass facade building, center, is believed to be the site of a foreign police outpost for China in New York's Chinatown. |
Two additional criminal complaints charged forty officers of the Chinese government's Ministry of Public Security (MPS). The complaints state the MPS officers established a task force to commit crimes targeting Chinese democracy activists and censoring speech of Chinese dissidents.
The police station encompassed the entire floor of an office building and provided illegal government services like helping Chinese citizens renew their Chinese driver's licenses, according to Peace.
In one instance, an official with China's national police directed one of the defendants who worked at the police station to help locate a pro-democracy activist of China living in California, Peace said.
‘In other words, the Chinese National Police appear to have been using the station to track a U.S. resident on U.S. soil’, Peace said.
The complaint alleges the two defendants destroyed evidence of their communications with Chinese police when they learned of an FBI investigation and obstructed justice.
The defendants face a maximum sentence of five years in prison if convicted of conspiring to act as Chinese agents and a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison if convicted of obstructing justice.
The second case charged 34 MPS officers for their involvement in a task force that targets Chinese democracy activists and dissidents located outside of China.
Peace said the task force operates as an ‘internet troll farm’ and its members created thousands of fake online personas used to harass, disparage and threaten dissidents and activists worldwide.
In one example, Peace cited how MPS officers would harass Chinese dissidents by interfering with virtual meetings – drowning out meetings with loud music, screams and threats.
‘We cannot and will not tolerate the Chinese government's persecution of pro-democracy activists who have sought refuge in this country’, Peace said.
In a separate criminal complaint, DOJ's Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division David Newman announced charges against an additional 10 individuals, including six MPS officials, for their role in helping the Chinese government censor speech.
Newman said MPS officers targeted participants in virtual meetings that took place on a U.S.-based tech company's platform in an effort to censor politically sensitive topics unacceptable to the Chinese government, such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
‘All these cases share a lot in common, including Chinese officials working for and at the direction of the Chinese government and targeting people here on U.S. soil’, Newman said”. -Rachel Looker, USA Today
It’s difficult for Americans to accept, but the U.S. Department of Justice is more committed in its efforts to trample the rights and liberties of its own citizenry, as well as undermine the democratic institutions and national sovereignty of the United States than the People’s Republic of China ever will be.
Given that it was back in 2013 when intelligence contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the existence of the secret, wide-ranging, information-gathering programs conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA), it’s long past time for everyone to understand that for more than a decade Americans have been living in the Age of the Panopticon and that the supposed Chi-coms are not the ones to blame for it.