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.