US authorities detained two men on Monday for establishing a Chinese “police station” in New York and charged 40 Chinese public security officials for a campaign to monitor and harass US-based dissidents as they busted “transnational repression schemes targeting members of the Chinese diaspora community.”
A lawsuit accusing two defendants with establishing and running an unauthorized foreign police station, situated in lower Manhattan, New York, for a provincial division of the People’s Republic of China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS), was unsealed on Monday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York (PRC).
The Bronx’s “Harry” Lu Jianwang, 61, and Manhattan’s Chen Jinping, 59, were detained this morning at their residences in New York City and are accused of planning to pose as PRC government agents.
For the Fuzhou branch of the MPS, the defendants collaborated to establish the nation’s first overseas police station. The police station was located on a level of an office building in Manhattan’s Chinatown. It was shut down in the autumn of 2022 when those in charge learned of the FBI inquiry.
According to Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, “the PRC, via its oppressive security apparatus, created a concealed physical presence in New York City to monitor and intimidate dissidents and anyone critical of its regime.” “The PRC’s activities significantly beyond what is considered appropriate nation-state behavior. We firmly resolve to protect everyone’s right to freedom in our nation against the menace of totalitarian persecution.
In addition, two criminal complaints filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York were unsealed on Monday in federal court in Brooklyn and named 44 defendants in connection with attempts by the PRC national police to harass Chinese nationals living in the New York metropolitan area and other parts of the country.
The defendants, who include two CAC executives and 40 MPS personnel, are accused of carrying out international repression campaigns against Americans who support democratic reforms in the PRC and other political beliefs that are unpopular with the PRC leadership.
The defendants engaged in two schemes where they established and utilized fictitious social media identities to harass and threaten PRC dissidents overseas and attempted to stifle their free expression on the platform of a U.S. telecoms corporation (Company-1). It is suspected that the defendants accused in these schemes live in the PRC or another country in Asia and are still at large.
These cases, according to Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, “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.” These measures are against the law, democratic principles, and fundamental human rights.
Acting Assistant Director Kurt Ronnow of the FBI Counterintelligence Division stated that “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 conference users’ free speech.”
“We won’t put up with the CCP’s attempts to intimidate, threaten, and harass citizens here in the United States. The FBI will continue to oppose the Chinese government’s attempts to break our laws and restrict citizens’ rights and freedoms.
