Eric Tucker
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Five men accused of acting on behalf of the Chinese government have been charged with a brazen and wide-ranging scheme to stalk and harass Chinese dissidents living in the United States, including attempting to undermine a small-judiciary The ministry said on March 16 that he was a well-known congressional candidate.
The cases underscore what U.S. officials say is an increasingly aggressive effort by the Chinese government—sometimes involving the use of hired private investigators—to find, suppress and threaten democracy activists abroad.
“Authoritarian states around the world are daring to go beyond their borders to intimidate or retaliate against individuals who speak out against repression and corruption,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olson, the Justice Department’s top national security official, said at a news conference. Three criminal cases were announced.
“This campaign runs counter to fundamental American values,” he added. “We will not tolerate such repression when it violates our laws.”
These criminal cases, filed in Brooklyn federal court, allege a months-long effort to embarrass dissidents and stifle their speech. In 2020, the Justice Department charged eight people with a pressure campaign on behalf of the Chinese government aimed at coercing a New Jersey man wanted by Beijing to return to China to face charges.
In one of the new cases, two New York men, directed by employees of a Chinese tech company, spy on pro-democracy activists, tried to illegally obtain and distribute a dissident’s federal tax returns, and conspired to sabotage the process, prosecutors said. is the work of a dissident artist. Last year, a sculpture depicting Chinese President Xi Jinping as a coronavirus molecule was removed, although no one has been charged, according to the Justice Department.
Two of the three men in the case, Fan “Frank” Liu and Matthew Ziburis, were arrested on March 15 on charges including conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and criminal use of identification. A third man, Qiang “Jason” Sun, is still at large, prosecutors said.
In another conspiracy that U.S. officials say was orchestrated by China’s Ministry of State Security, a writer who helped found a pro-democracy group gathered intelligence on dissidents and activists, Uighurs, Tibetans and advocates for Hong Kong independence . The man, Wang Shujun, 73, was arrested on March 16.
A third scheme by men known as Chinese government agents seeks to undermine the candidacy of congressional candidates by conspiring to find and even create derogatory information.
The agent, Lin Qiming, is accused of contacting a private investigator seeking information on the candidate’s phone number, address and vehicle. He later asked investigators to “dig into things from 1989 to the present” to look for flaws that hurt the candidate and thus hurt his candidacy.
According to the charging documents, Lin had told investigators that ultimately “violence is okay” and suggested he could be beaten “until he can’t run.”
Lin, the investigator allegedly contacted, was actually an FBI source, who reported the initial contact to the agent and said he believed Lin was a retired agent from the Chinese Ministry of State Security.
“Based on the conduct summarized in this article and my experience and training, I assess that LIN continues to act on behalf of MSS, even though ostensibly retired,” the FBI agent conducting the investigation wrote in an affidavit.
The candidate is described in court documents as a Chinese dissident and student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. While the nominee was not named in the complaint, biographical details in the document match the resume of Yan Xiong, who announced his candidacy as a Democrat running for a congressional seat in New York City in this year’s election.
Lin remains at large, officials said. The charges he faces include conspiracy to commit interstate harassment.
Brooklyn’s top U.S. attorney, Breon Peace, would not describe any conversation officials might have had with Yan, but said the Justice Department took seriously its obligation to warn victims of potential threats and avoid violence.
Yan, who has lived in the U.S. for 30 years, said in an interview with The Associated Press that he did not know any details of the allegations and only learned of them after they were contacted by reporters. He said he had not witnessed any harassment or intimidation, nor had he contacted the FBI or the Justice Department, and he did not know why the Chinese government would be interested in his congressional run.
“It’s not about them. Why they did it, I can’t understand,” he said. He added: “I’m getting mad. I have nothing to do with them. I’m a pure American citizen.”
