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20-04-2023
NEW YORK: Authorities in the United States have arrested two men on allegations they operated a “secret police station” in New York City on behalf of China.
China foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Tuesday disputed the US claims. China maintains a policy of non-interference in other countries and these alleged police stations do not exist, he said.
The US Department of Justice announced the charges at a news conference on Monday, saying Liu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, opened the covert police outpost in Manhattan’s Chinatown in early 2022.
Breon Peace, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said the men had engaged in “transnational repression targeting members of the Chinese diaspora community in New York City and elsewhere in the United States” at the behest of Beijing.
Both were charged with conspiring to act as an agent of China’s government without informing US authorities, as well as obstruction of justice.
The second charge relates to the men admitting that they deleted correspondences with an official from China’s Ministry of Public Security once they discovered they were being investigated, authorities said.
The secret police station “at the very least” provided Chinese citizens with basic Chinese government services, Peace said, adding that this in itself would run afoul of US law without prior approval.
However, he said the station “had a more sinister use”.
“On at least one occasion, an official with the Chinese national police directed one of the defendants, a US citizen who worked at the secret police station, to help locate a pro-democracy activist of Chinese descent living in California,” Peace said.
“In other words, the Chinese national police appear to have been using the station to track a US resident on US soil.”
Authorities said the police station closed in the fall of last year after the men learned they were being investigated.
If convicted, the accused both face up to five years in prison for conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government and up to 20 years for the obstruction charge. They were set to appear in court in Brooklyn later on Monday.
Spanish human rights organization Safeguard Defenders has said China has dozens of such covert police stations across the globe, including in the United Kingdom and the US.
In a report last September, the group said the stations were used to “harass, threaten, intimidate and force targets to return to China for persecution”. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
