Compile: WenJie
Editor: Gary
The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) held a joint press conference on Wednesday, local time, accusing eight people of being illegal agents of the Chinese government for participating in China’s “fox hunt” in the United States. Under the instructions of Chinese officials, they threatened , Harass, monitor and intimidate Chinese citizens in the United States to return to the country for interrogation.
Radio Hong Kong reported that the eight defendants included seven Chinese and an American private investigator who assisted them. US law enforcement authorities arrested 5 people in New Jersey, New York, and California on Wednesday morning. Another 3 people are at large and they are believed to have returned to China.
Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported that the eight people accused of acting as Chinese illegal agents in the United States will face up to five years in prison, and six of them also face charges of conspiracy to cross-state and international tracking.
Officials from the Ministry of Justice stated that in China’s fox hunt operations, some of the targets were wanted criminals who committed criminal offences, but in many cases the arrests were political opponents, dissidents and critics of the Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping.
Demers, Assistant Secretary of the National Security Service of the US Department of Justice, said: “With today’s accusations, China’s fox hunting operations have changed from hunters to hunted, and hunters have become hunted.”
The indictment alleges that between 2016 and 2017, the defendant was suspected of monitoring and harassing a former Chinese government official who arrived in the United States in New Jersey in 2010, threatening him to return to China for 10 years in prison in exchange for the safety of his wife and daughter. In another case, the victim was threatened to commit suicide or return to China voluntarily, and the victim received a threatening note at his door.
Demers said: “Without the cooperation of our government, the Chinese repatriation team entered the United States to monitor and search for suspected fugitives, deploy intimidation and other means to force them to return to China. After they return home, they will face imprisonment or worse, illegal interrogation. ”
The FBI stated in July that China’s “Fox Hunting Operation” used shocking methods to force overseas Chinese to return to China. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded at the time that combating transnational crime was a broad consensus of the international community. China’s overseas “fox hunting operation” to capture the escaped suspects is to safeguard legal dignity and social justice. According to figures from the Ministry of Public Security, the “Fox Hunt” had pursued more than 4,900 fugitives as of the first half of last year and recovered more than 17 billion yuan in stolen money.
Criticizing the United States as an enemy of China
In addition, Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of China’s hawkish Global Times, confirmed on Thursday that five persons involved in “Fox Hunt” were arrested in the United States. This is the first time that a “Fox Hunt” person has been arrested in the United States. Hu Xijin said that this time the United States was “deliberately looking for faults” (troubles), and it made a major move of arresting five “fox hunters” just before the US general election. The public is the enemy.
Hu Xijin retorted in his personal Weibo post, “Washington is too bad. They don’t want China’s economic criminals and corrupt officials who fled to the United States to return to China. Those people have taken away a lot of money and consumed the money in the United States. It’s good. Of course, Washington will not really help China fight corruption.”
The article said, “What is particularly disgusting is that the US claims that the corrupt elements that China wants to bring back to China are actually’dissidents’, not economic criminals. They use this label familiar to Westerners to specifically hunt down economic crimes that flee from abroad. The “fox hunting operations” of the authors discredited and deceived the Western public’s support for their arrest of “fox hunters” in the United States.”
Hu Xijin asked, “China has many famous’dissidents’ in the United States. Which one of them has been arrested and returned to China? They showed great patience in conflicting situations.
Hu Xijin even alleged that “fox hunting” is an action full of justice, and Washington’s fight against “fox hunting” is in fact to provide shelter to economic criminals, which is an enemy of the Chinese public who hates corruption.