WASHINGTON (AP) – After a student leader of the historic Tiananmen Square protest movement runs for the 2022 New York Congressional election, Chinese intelligence operatives are investigating mistresses and tax issues that could undermine the candidate’s candidacy. Little time was wasted in enlisting the help of a private investigator to find the suspect. the prosecutor says.
“Violence will be okay, after all,” the operative ominously told the contact.
When an Iranian journalist and activist living in exile in the United States aired criticism of Iran’s human rights abuses, Iran was listening. According to the Department of Justice, members of an Eastern European organized crime group spied on her Brooklyn home and plotted to kill her in a murder-for-hire plot from Iran, which failed and led to her criminal charges. .
These episodes reflect the extreme measures taken by countries such as China and Iran to intimidate, harass, and sometimes plan attacks on political opponents and activists living in the United States. It illustrates the dire consequences that geopolitical tensions can have on ordinary citizens, as governments have historically been intolerant of dissent. People within their own borders increasingly monitor those who speak out thousands of miles away.
“We are not living in fear, we are not living in paranoia, but the reality is very clear: the Islamic Republic wants us dead and we are It means you have to look over your shoulder every day,” said an Iranian journalist. Masi Alinejadsaid in an interview.
The issue has attracted the attention of the Justice Department, which has prosecuted dozens of suspects over the past five years for cross-border repression. FBI officials told The Associated Press that tactics are becoming more sophisticated, including hiring agents such as private investigators and organized crime leaders, and that countries seeking to project power are turning harassment into violence. It is said that he is actively crossing a “serious line that should not be crossed.” Suppress dissent abroad.
Foreign adversaries are increasingly making well-funded intimidation campaigns a priority for intelligence agencies, including those not traditionally seen as hostile to the United States and Western nations. A growing number of countries are targeting critics of the United States, officials said. conditions of anonymity to discuss their research.
For example, the Justice Department announced last November that it had disrupted a plot to kill a Sikh activist in New York, which officials claimed was directed by Indian government officials. Rwanda arrested Paul Rusesabagina of Hotel Rwanda fame, deported him and released him to the United States last year, but Saudi Arabia harassed his critics online and in person, the FBI said. .
Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security official, said there has been an “alarming increase” in government-sponsored harassment, adding: “This is a very important priority for us.”
He said the purpose of the prosecution was not only to hold harassers accountable, but also that the actions were “acceptable from the perspective of defending American sovereignty and American values, including values around freedom of expression and freedom of association.” “It’s not possible,” he said.
The number of infected people is rapidly increasing in other countries as well.
An April report by Reporters Without Borders identified London as a “hotspot” for Iranian attacks on Farsi-language broadcasters, and British counter-terrorism police responded to the attack in front of a London home a month ago. An investigation into the attack on an Iranian TV presenter is underway. Harassment and attacks against Russians in the UK and other parts of Europe, including a journalist who fell ill after allegedly ingesting poison in Germany, have long been reported despite Kremlin denials. Russian intelligence operatives have been blamed.
Domestically, relations with Iran continue to deteriorate, a trend made even more worrying by tensions with China over everything from trade and intellectual property theft to election interference. There is. Emerging technologies such as generative AI are also likely to be used for future harassment, U.S. intelligence officials said in a recent threat assessment.
“Transnational repression is a manifestation of broader conflicts between authoritarian regimes and democracies. This is a consistent sign of how the world is changing from a geopolitical perspective over the past decade. “It’s a theme,” Olsen said.
“I don’t really feel safe.”
Two of the main culprits are China and Iran, officials and advocates say.
An email sent to Iran’s mission to the United Nations was not returned. A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington disputed that the country engages in such practices, saying the government “strictly abides by international law and fully respects the law enforcement sovereignty of other countries.” ” said in a statement.
“We firmly oppose ‘long-distance jurisdiction,'” the statement said.
But U.S. officials say China has created a program to do just that, launching “Operation Fox Hunt” to track down Chinese expatriates wanted by the Chinese government and bully them into filing charges. It states that the purpose is to encourage people to comply with the law.
A former Chinese city employee living in New Jersey found a note written in Chinese characters taped to the front door of his home. “If he’s willing to go back to the mainland and spend 10 years in prison, his wife and children will be fine.” This is the end of this matter! ” According to a 2020 Justice Department case, a group of Chinese operatives and an American private investigator were indicted.
Most defendants charged in cross-border repression schemes are based in their home countries, so arrests and prosecutions are rare, but a private investigator and two Chinese nationals living in the United States were convicted in this particular case last year. received.
Bob Fu, a Chinese-American Christian pastor with ChinaAid, an organization that advocates for religious freedom in China, said he has endured a widespread campaign of harassment over the years. Large numbers of demonstrators gathered outside his West Texas home for days before arriving in a well-coordinated action that he believes may have ties to the Chinese government.
Fake hotel reservations were made in his name and a fake bomb threat was made to police, claiming he was planning to detonate an explosive device. Leaflets depicting him as the devil were distributed to neighbors. He said he has learned to take precautions when traveling, including asking staff not to post his itinerary in advance, and was relocated from his home at the request of law enforcement.
“I don’t really feel safe,” Fu told The Associated Press. He said of returning to China, where he grew up and left more than 25 years ago as a religious refugee. I’m sure I’m on their wanted list. ”
Wu Jianmin, a former student leader of China’s 1989 democracy movement, was targeted by a group of protesters in 2020 in front of her home in Irvine, California. The harassment continued for more than two months.
“They shouted slogans and yelled abuse outside my house. They paraded around the neighborhood, handing out all kinds of pictures and leaflets and putting them in the mailboxes of my neighbors,” he said. Ta.
Wu said perpetrators of the harassment scheme include retired Communist Party members and their children living in the United States, members of Chinese organizations with close ties to the Chinese government, and even fugitives seeking negotiations with the Chinese government. I believe.
“The end goal is the same,” Wu said in an interview in Mandarin. “Their mission given to them by the Communist Party is to suppress overseas democratic activists.”
Last year, the Justice Department indicted about 30 Chinese National Police officers on charges of using social media to target dissidents in the United States, including creating fake accounts to share harassing videos and comments. The Justice Department arrested two men on charges that they were involved in establishing the police force. A secret police outpost in Manhattan’s Chinatown district on behalf of the Chinese government.
The year before, federal prosecutors in New York had uncovered a series of far-reaching schemes to silence dissidents, including one to dig up dirt on little-known and ultimately unsuccessful congressional candidates.
Other targets included American figure skater Alisa Liu and her father, Arthur, a political refugee, who prosecutors said were being watched by a man posing as an Olympic committee member and demanding their passport information. It is said that it was
A sculpture created by a California dissident artist depicting the coronavirus with the face of Chinese President Xi Jinping was also dismantled and burned.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill.), the top Democrat on the China-focused House select committee, said, “Somehow they harbor the illusion that they are fraudsters or people with no ties to the Chinese government. “No,” he said of Chinese agents. I was charged.
“Please remove his head from his body.”
Sometimes violence is planned depending on the world situation.
Prosecutors charge Iranian operative in 2022 with offering $300,000 to “eliminate” Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton in return for airstrike that killed Iran’s most powerful general did.
This year, a new Tehran threat has emerged. The Justice Department has charged an Iranian national, identified by authorities as a drug trafficker and intelligence agent, and two Canadians, one a “full patch” member of the Hells Angels gang, with murder. Conspiracy for hire against two Iranian nationals who had fled the country and were living in Maryland.
One of the hired Canadians is accused of saying, “We have to make his head disappear from his body” before the threat was interrupted.
Iranian journalist Alinejad was targeted even before the Justice Department announced the murder-for-hire plot last year. In 2021, prosecutors indicted a group of Iranians believed to be acting on the orders of the country’s intelligence services for plotting her abduction.
Alinejad remains a prominent journalist and vocal opposition activist, determined to continue speaking out during last year’s sentencing hearing for a woman who prosecutors say inadvertently financed a kidnapping plot. He said he was doing it.
But the details of the plot are horrifyingly etched in her mind. The criminal case covers not only the intrusive surveillance and gruesome preparations she faced, including researching how to get Alinejad out of New York on a military speedboat and discussing invitations to get Alinejad out of New York. clarified the seriousness of the threat. Home – Asking for flowers from the outside garden, etc.
One of the defendants in the murder-for-hire scheme was arrested in 2022 after he was spotted driving around Alinejad’s Brooklyn neighborhood with a loaded rifle and ammunition. Another suspect was extradited from the Czech Republic to face charges in February. Two other people are also in custody.
The FBI thwarted the plot, but also encouraged Alinejad to transfer, which she did. But it also meant saying goodbye to her beloved garden, where she brought joy to neighbors with her homegrown cucumbers and other vegetables.
“They didn’t physically kill me, but they destroyed my garden and my relationships with my neighbors,” Alinejad said.
