The US Department of Justice has exposed a massive network of Chinese secret police officers. Two of them were even able to open a secret police station in the heart of New York in Manhattan. According to the prosecutor’s office and the FBI, Beijing agents searched for and caught Chinese dissidents in the United States, and also intimidated those who did not agree with the policy of the Chinese government through social networks. When the secret police station was discovered, the agents were able to destroy the evidence linking them to the Chinese authorities. For this they face up to 20 years in prison.
US authorities discovered a secret Chinese police station in New York and arrested two of its employees. About this April 17 US Department of Justice said.
The department stressed that this is the first time that a police station of another state was actually opened in the United States. “The PRC, through its repressive security service, has established a covert physical presence in New York to control and intimidate dissident critics of the Chinese government,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said.
Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace said that the arrested Chinese were carrying out orders from Beijing. In particular, they helped to search for a Chinese dissident living in the United States, and also obstructed the investigations of American law enforcement agencies. Peace called it a flagrant violation of US sovereignty by the PRC.
According to the Ministry of Justice, Lu has worked closely with law enforcement in China in the past, including the MPS. Since 2015, he worked in the Chinese secret police, where he carried out various instructions from the authorities, including carrying out repressions against Chinese living in the United States who were dissatisfied with Beijing’s policies. In 2015, he participated in protests in Washington during the visit of the Chinese President Xi Jinping. In 2018, Lu was involved in the capture and return to China of a dissident. And in 2022, he, along with an accomplice, tried to find a Chinese activist from California advocating democratic reforms in China.
In early 2022, “Harry” Lu Jianwang opened a police station in an office building in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The department worked until the fall of 2022. At that moment, the FBI became aware of the site, after which both of its employees closed the office and destroyed documents testifying to its activities.
In October, during a search, bureau officers confiscated phones from Lu and Cheyaa. While reviewing the information contained in them, the FBI discovered that the correspondence with the official from the MPS, from whom the arrested received tasks, had been deleted.
Both Chinese are charged with conspiring to act as agents of a foreign country. Under this article, they face a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison. However, under the article on obstruction of justice, the Chinese can go to jail for 20 years.
On the same day, the Ministry of Justice filed charges against 44 more Chinese citizens, whom it considers members of the secret police who participated in repressive activities in the United States. It is noted that most of the accused are in China.
The US authorities believe that all of them, on behalf of the MPS, created thousands of fake social media accounts to harass and intimidate Chinese dissidents living in the United States. The defendants used temporary email addresses and simulated communication and interaction with other users to hide their activities.
Prosecutor Peace, in turn, said that the Chinese authorities use their police not as a law enforcement and law enforcement agency, but as a “troll factory” to attack people who, in Beijing’s opinion, speak in an unacceptable way about the Chinese government.
Previously about China having “secret police” branches in many Western countries, informed Spanish NGO Safeguard Defenders. According to her, nine such offices are in Spain, four in Italy, two in the Netherlands and one in Sweden. The NPO report also says that with the help of the “secret police”, the Chinese authorities “convinced” 230,000 Chinese people to return to their homeland between April 2021 and July 2022 to stand trial.
After the Safeguard Defenders report, the United States began looking for illegal police stations. In January The New York Times citing sources, she reported that FBI agents raided Chinatown in Brooklyn last fall and found illegal Chinese police stations there. According to the newspaper, in New York, such a site was located in the offices of the Chinese public organization America Changle Association NY. At the same time, the Chinese embassy in the United States claimed that there are volunteers working there who provide services to the Chinese, such as renewing driver’s licenses in their homeland.
