US charges 40 officers of China’s National Police for harassing Chinese nationals

44 people including 40 police officers of China’s National Police were charged with crimes related to harassment of Chinese nationals residing in New York and elsewhere in the United States. On Monday, the Department of Justice said in a statement that two complaints filed by the US Attorney’s office of the Eastern District of New York were unsealed. As per the complaints, the defendants were accused of creating fake social media to harass Chinese nationals in the United States. They were also accused of working with employees of a US telecommunication company and ensuring the removal of the People’s Republic of China dissidents from the platform. As per the press release by the Department of Justice, the defendants include 40 MPS officers and two officials from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). The officers were accused of perpetrating a “transnational repression scheme” that were targetting multiple dissenters from across the country. 

“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,” the Monday press release reads. Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, Matthew G. Olsen, talked about the ongoing case. Olsen asserted that this indicates the length the PRC government will go to silence and harass dissenters. “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,”  he asserted. “These actions violate our laws and are an affront to our democratic values and basic human rights,” Olsen further added. 

Case highlights the involvement of China’s Ministry of Public Service 

The Acting Assitant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, Kurt Ronnow stated that China’s Ministry of Public Security was involved in the whole ordeal. Ronnow accused the Chinese Ministry of using operatives to target people of Chinese descent who were using their freedom of speech to criticise the government. “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,” Ronnow said in the Monday press release. “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,” he added. Earlier today it was reported that two men were arrested on Monday for helping a secret Chinese police station operate in New York City. The recent cases are part of the US Department of Justice’s effort to prevent the Chinese government from disrupting the voices of pro-democracy activists residing in the United States.