China disputes US claims of Chinese ‘secret police station’ in New York
The FBI has arrested two alleged Chinese agents for running a ‘covert police station’ in New York at the behest of the Xi Jinping government.
Chinese and U.S. flags.
Beijing: China foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Tuesday disputed U.S. claims of a Chinese “secret police station” in New York.
China maintains a policy of non-interference in other countries and these alleged police stations do not exist, Wang told a regular news briefing.
U.S. federal agents arrested two New York residents for allegedly operating a Chinese “secret police station” in the Chinatown district of Manhattan on Monday in what prosecutors said was part of a crackdown on Beijing’s alleged targeting of dissidents.
The police station was allegedly operated by Lu Jianwang (61) and Chen Jinping (59). Both are American citizens and face charges of conspiring to act as agents for China and obstruction of justice.
According to the US Justice Department, Lu and Chen set up the first overseas police station in the US on behalf of China’s Ministry of Public Security in early 2022. The police station was shut down in autumn after those involved became aware of the FBI probe. The men have confessed that they deleted correspondence with an official from the Chinese ministry after they discovered they were being investigated.
Breon Peace, the US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said the men had engaged in “transnational repression targeting members of the Chinese diaspora community in New York City and elsewhere in the United States” at the behest of Beijing, according to a report in Al Jazeera.
The secret outpost “at the very least” provided Chinese citizens with basic Chinese government services like helping them renew their Chinese driver’s licences but it served a more “sinister” purpose, say reports.
A Chinese national police official directed one of the two defendants to help track a Chinese-origin pro-democracy activist in California, Al Jazeera reports. “In other words, the Chinese national police appear to have been using the station to track a US resident on US soil,” said Peace.
“This is a blatant violation of our national sovereignty,” Michael Driscoll, the head of New York’s FBI field office, said at a news conference.
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