Police in New York have arrested two residents of that city for allegedly running a secret Chinese police station in Manhattan’s Chinatown district. They are formally charged with performing work for the Chinese government without notifying the US authorities and with obstructing justice.
In 2018, one of the two suspects tried to persuade a Chinese refugee in the US to return to China, according to the federal prosecutor in the Brooklyn borough. The victim reported harassment and threats. The Chinese government allegedly asked this suspect last year to trace the whereabouts of a Chinese activist in California.
The suspects are US citizens with Chinese roots. They allegedly confessed to erasing their communications with the Chinese government when they realized they were being watched.
If it is proven that they worked for the Chinese government, they risk a prison sentence of five years. Obstruction of justice carries a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison.
Special unit
The US Justice Department also wants to prosecute 34 members of China’s Ministry of Public Security. They would have been members of a special unit that threatened Chinese dissidents in the US and spread Chinese propaganda. They did that with fake accounts on social media like Twitter.
The FBI reported in November in a Senate hearing that it was investigating the existence of an illegal Chinese “police station” in Manhattan. Last fall, the FBI searched an office space on the third floor of a nondescript building, according to The New York Times. Items have been seized.
The Netherlands
In September, a Spanish human rights organization announced that China was running at least 54 such agencies worldwide. In November, RTL News and Follow the Money reported illegal Chinese police stations in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. China’s Foreign Ministry said these were service points, where Chinese nationals can, for example, apply for new driver’s licenses. Minister Hoekstra of Foreign Affairs informed the ambassador of China that these offices had to close their doors immediately.
Mayor Halsema wrote to the Amsterdam city council in February that a search by the police for a desk in November had yielded nothing.
- Police can’t find an illegal Chinese police station in Amsterdam
- China denies the existence of police stations in the Netherlands, calls it ‘service points’
- ‘China has illegal police stations in the Netherlands, indications of intimidation’
