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Their freedom requires your slavery.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Bark louder, little dog.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

No Justins, No Peace

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

The revolution will be supervised.

He really is that stupid.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

“woke” is the new caravan.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

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Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Republicans in disarray!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / 40 Officers of China’s National Police Charged for Targeting U.S. Residents

40 Officers of China’s National Police Charged for Targeting U.S. Residents

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40 Officers of China’s National Police Charged in Transnational Repression Schemes Targeting U.S. Residents

Defendants Accused of Creating Fake Social Media Accounts to Harass PRC Dissidents, and Working with Employees of a U.S. Telecommunications Company (Company-1) to Remove Dissidents from Company’s Platform

Two criminal complaints filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York were unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging 44 defendants with various crimes related to efforts by the national police of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) – to harass Chinese nationals residing in the New York metropolitan area and elsewhere in the United States. The defendants, including 40 MPS officers and two officials in the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), allegedly perpetrated transnational repression schemes targeting U.S. residents whose political views and actions are disfavored by the PRC government, such as advocating for democracy in the PRC.

In the two schemes, the defendants created and used fake social media accounts to harass and intimidate PRC dissidents residing abroad and sought to suppress the dissidents’ free speech on the platform of a U.S. telecommunications company (Company-1). The defendants charged in these schemes are believed to reside in the PRC or elsewhere in Asia and remain at large.

“These cases demonstrate the lengths the PRC government will go to silence and harass U.S. persons who exercise their fundamental rights to speak out against PRC oppression, including by unlawfully exploiting a U.S.-based technology company,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “These actions violate our laws and are an affront to our democratic values and basic human rights.”

“China’s Ministry of Public Security used operatives to target people of Chinese descent who had the courage to speak out against the Chinese Communist Party – in one case by covertly spreading propaganda to undermine confidence in our democratic processes and, in another, by suppressing U.S. video conferencing users’ free speech,” said Acting Assistant Director Kurt Ronnow of the FBI Counterintelligence Division. “We aren’t going to tolerate CCP repression – its efforts to threaten, harass, and intimidate people – here in the United States. The FBI will continue to confront the Chinese government’s efforts to violate our laws and repress the rights and freedoms of people in our country.”

I have no idea what the actual name of Company-1 is, and I suppose that is the point.

Evil never sleeps.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

22Comments

  1. 1.

    Frankensteinbeck

    This would be weird from any other country, but my persistent impression has been that Xi is obsessed with soft power, with propaganda, reputation, pride, and influence as the way to create a China-dominated world.  It’s way better than Putin’s desire to just conquer an empire, but it leads to some actions like this that nobody else would bother with.

  2. 2.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    such as advocating for democracy in the PRC.

    Anarchy in the UK Democracy in China!!!

  3. 3.

    Roger Moore

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    One thing both Xi and Putin have in common is behaving as if they have trans-national rights to anyone of the appropriate ethnicity.  Russia uses the existence of Russian speakers in their near abroad as justification for meddling in those countries’ affairs, even when those Russian speakers are citizens of the other country.  Similarly, China is acting as though all Chinese people should be subject to its power regardless of citizenship.

    One place where I find this particularly noxious is in the treatment of Chinese emigres.  China requires its citizens to renounce their citizenship if they naturalize in another country.  Many of my Chinese emigre coworkers delayed naturalizing in the US because of this, since it made it harder for them if/when they visited China.  But now, after forcing those people to give up their citizenship, China wants to behave as if it continues to be their government.

  8. 8.

    WaterGirl

    This incident makes me think of Jamal Khashoggi, and I am furious and disgusted.  How can the world even begin to  impose consequences when the sitting president is just fine with the kidnapping and dismemberment of a good man?

  10. 10.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    the Red Guard never dies, it won’t even fade away

  11. 11.

    Scout211

    I have no idea what the actual name of Company-1 is, and I suppose that is the point.

    From the the Justice Department release, a clue:

    A complaint and arrest warrant were unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging Xinjiang Jin, also known as “Julien Jin,” with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and unlawful conspiracy to transfer a means of identification.  Jin, an employee of a U.S.-based telecommunications company (Company-1) who was based in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), allegedly participated in a scheme to disrupt a series of meetings in May and June 2020 held to commemorate the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in the PRC.  The meetings were conducted using a videoconferencing program provided by Company-1, and were organized and hosted by U.S-based individuals, including individuals residing in the Eastern District of New York.  Jin is not in U.S. custody.

    Google, my first guess.

  12. 12.

    Jay

    The RCMP and CSIS are investigating similar CCP operations in all of Canada’s major cities and have been for over a year.

  13. 13.

    kindness

    I wouldn’t be shocked if Company 1 is Twitter and Elon was all in on suppressing their speech.

  14. 14.

    Scout211

    According to many reports, China has over a hundred police stations in countries around the world.
     — 

    Beijing has set up more than 100 so-called overseas police stations across the globe to monitor, harass and in some cases repatriate Chinese citizens living in exile, using bilateral security arrangements struck with countries in Europe and Africa to gain a widespread presence internationally, a new report shared exclusively with CNN alleges.

    Madrid-based human rights campaigner Safeguard Defenders says it found evidence China was operating 48 additional police stations abroad since the group first revealed the existence of 54 such stations in September.

    Its new release – dubbed “Patrol and Persuade” – focuses on the scale of the network and examines the role that joint policing initiatives between China and several European nations, including Italy, Croatia, Serbia and Romania have played in piloting a wider expansion of Chinese overseas stations than was known until the organization’s revelations came out.

    Among the fresh claims leveled by the group: that a Chinese citizen was coerced into returning home by operatives working undercover in a Chinese overseas police station in a Paris suburb, expressly recruited for that purpose, in addition to an earlier disclosure that two more Chinese exiles have been forcibly returned from Europe – one in Serbia, the other in Spain.

  15. 15.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Roger Moore:

    even when those Russian speakers are citizens of the other country

    And that they only speak russian due to Stalinist ethnic-cleansing policies.

  16. 16.

    Geminid

    I hope our commenter from Wuhan is OK. He hasn’t participated much lately. He is in a vulnerable position.

  17. 17.

    Roger Moore

    @Gin & Tonic:

    And that they only speak russian due to Stalinist ethnic-cleansing policies.

    Or that they’re ethnic Russians who were deliberately moved to those places as part of Russia’s imperialist policies, e.g. the ethnic Russian population in the Baltic states.

  18. 18.

    Burnspbesq

    China has enormous leverage over Leon Skum by virtue of its ability to mess with Tesla’s operations there, so my money is on Twitter.

  19. 19.

    karen marie

    @Burnspbesq:   Twitter isn’t a “telecommunications company,” last I checked.

    Someone else suggested Google.  It’s a bit of a stretch to describe them that way but they do provide “telecommunication services” of a sort, so I’d guess that’s more likely.

  20. 20.

    sab

    @Geminid: It may just be that there is a lot less activity on the covid front since the government data reporting hasas sort of dried up in the US and China, and covid threads are mostly where he comments.

  21. 21.

    Roger Moore

    @karen marie:

    Yeah, I don’t know of a videoconferencing software put out by Twitter.  Google has Google Meet, Microsoft has Teams, but I’d guess Zoom.  I remember early in the pandemic there was a panic about all communications on Zoom going through China.

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