China, Iran Hunt for Dissiden 05/06 06:41

   

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- After a participant in the historic Tiananmen Square 
protests entered a 2022 congressional race in New York City, a Chinese 
intelligence operative wasted little time enlisting a private investigator to 
hunt for any mistresses or tax problems that could upend the candidate's bid, 
prosecutors say.

   "In the end," the operative ominously told his contact, "violence would be 
fine too."

   As an Iranian journalist and activist living in exile in the United States 
aired criticism of Iran's human rights abuses, Tehran was listening too. 
Members of an Eastern European organized crime gang scouted her Brooklyn home 
and plotted to kill her in a murder-for-hire scheme directed from Iran, 
according to the Justice Department, which foiled the plan and brought criminal 
charges.

   The episodes reflect the extreme measures taken by countries like China and 
Iran to intimidate, harass and sometimes plot attacks against political 
opponents and activists who live in the U.S. They show the frightening 
consequences that geopolitical tensions can have for ordinary citizens as 
governments historically intolerant of dissent inside their own borders are 
increasingly keeping a threatening watch on those who speak out thousands of 
miles away.

   "We're not living in fear, we're not living in paranoia, but the reality is 
very clear -- that the Islamic Republic wants us dead, and we have to look over 
our shoulder every day," the Iranian journalist, Masih Alinejad, said in an 
interview.

   The issue has grabbed the attention of the Justice Department, which has 
built cases against dozens of suspects. Senior FBI officials say the tactics 
have grown more sophisticated, with countries more willing to cross "serious 
red lines" from harassment into violence as they seek to project power abroad.

   "This is a huge priority for us," said Assistant Attorney General Matthew 
Olsen, the Justice Department's top national security official.

   The trend is all the more worrisome because of an ever-deteriorating 
relationship with Iran and tensions with China over everything from trade and 
theft of intellectual property to election interference.

   A leading culprit, officials and advocates say, has been China. The Chinese 
Embassy in Washington disputed that the country engages in the practice and 
said in a statement that the government "strictly abides by international law."

   "We resolutely oppose 'long-arm jurisdiction,'" the statement said.

   Yet U.S. officials say China created a program to do exactly that, launching 
"Operation Fox Hunt" to track down Chinese expatriates wanted by Beijing, with 
a goal of coercing them into returning to face charges.

   A former city government official in China living in New Jersey found a note 
in Chinese characters taped to his front door that said: "If you are willing to 
go back to the mainland and spend 10 years in prison your wife and children 
will be all right. That's the end of this matter!" according to a 2020 Justice 
Department case charging a group of Chinese operatives and an American private 
investigator.

   Though most defendants charged in transnational repression plots are based 
in their home country, making arrests and prosecutions rare, that particular 
case led to U.S. convictions of the private investigator and two Chinese 
citizens.

   Bob Fu, a Chinese American Christian pastor whose organization, ChinaAid, 
advocates for religious freedom in China, said he has endured far-ranging 
harassment campaigns for years. Large crowds of demonstrators have amassed for 
days at a time outside his West Texas home in well-coordinated actions he 
believes can be linked to the Chinese government.

   Phony hotel reservations have been made in his name, along with bogus bomb 
threats to police stating that he planned to detonate explosives. Flyers 
depicting him as the devil have been distributed to neighbors. He said he's 
learned to take precautions when he travels.

   "I'm not really feeling safe," Fu told AP.

   Wu Jianmin, a former student leader in China's 1989 pro-democracy movement, 
was targeted in 2020 by a group of protesters outside his home in Irvine, 
California.

   "They shouted slogans outside my home and made verbal abuses," he said. 
"They paraded in the neighborhood, distributed all sorts of pictures and 
flyers, and put them in the neighbors' mailboxes."

   Last year, the Justice Department charged about three dozen officers in 
China's national police force with using social media to target dissidents 
inside the U.S. and arrested two men who it says had helped establish a secret 
Chinese police outpost in Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood.

   The year before, federal prosecutors disclosed a series of wide-ranging 
plots to silence dissidents.

   Besides the little-known and unsuccessful congressional candidate about whom 
China wanted to dig up dirt, other victims of harassment in the case included 
American figure skater Alysa Liu and her father, Arthur, a political refugee 
who prosecutors say was surveilled by a man who posed as an Olympics committee 
member and asked them for their passport information.

   "We should be under no illusion that somehow these are rogue actors or 
people that are unaffiliated with the Chinese government," Rep. Raja 
Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat and member of a special House committee on 
China, said of the Chinese operatives who have been charged.

   Alinejad, the Iranian journalist, was targeted even before the Justice 
Department last year revealed the plot against her involving the organized 
crime proxies. Prosecutors in 2021 charged a group of Iranians said to be 
working at the behest of the country's intelligence services with planning to 
kidnap her.

   She remains active as a journalist and activist and says she's determined to 
keep speaking out. But the details of the crime are chillingly etched in her 
mind, with the criminal cases laying bare the gravity of the threat.

   The FBI disrupted the plot but also encouraged her to move, which she has 
done. But that also meant saying goodbye to her garden, which had brought her 
joy as she gave homegrown cucumbers and other vegetables to neighbors.

   "They didn't kill me physically, but they killed my relationship with my 
garden, with my neighbors," she said.