GOP urges action as China uses US as ‘hunting ground’ for dissidents.
Chinese Agents Indicted for Targeting Falun Gong in the US
The recent indictments of two suspected Chinese agents in California are examples of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is trying to turn the United States into a “hunting ground” for dissidents, according to Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.).
The two individuals attempted to bribe an undercover officer posing as an IRS agent, in a plot to revoke the tax-exempt status of an entity run and maintained by Falun Gong practitioners, according to the Department of Justice. They were arrested at their residences on May 26 and face charges of conspiracy, bribery, and money laundering.
“This is another example of just how the CCP, the Communist Chinese Party, is doing all they can to undermine our sovereignty [and] silence all dissent even in our country,” Newhouse told EpochTV’s “Crossroads” on May 30.
While U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has characterized the case as part of China’s “campaign of transnational repression” in the United States, Newhouse gave a blunt assessment of the situation.
“I want to be clear about what I think this really means. This is a foreign government that is committing crimes against those that it deems to be a threat, right here on American soil,” Newhouse said.
The two suspected Chinese agents—John Chen from California’s Chino City and Lin Feng from Los Angeles—carried out their bribery campaign from January to May this year, according to prosecutors.
According to a court document, Chen characterized one of the Chinese officials the two received “direction” from as someone “that is always in charge of these matters,” during an intercepted phone call. In other words, the unidentified Chinese official could be directly involved in China’s ongoing persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, possibly once having a position within the regime’s extralegal body known as the “610 Office.”
Falun Gong and the 610 Office
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline with slow meditative exercises and moral teachings. In 1999, the Chinese regime launched a persecution campaign against the group, throwing practitioners into prisons, labor camps, and brainwashing centers.
Hundreds of thousands of practitioners have been subjected to torture while incarcerated, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center, while thousands have been killed as a result of torture and abuse in police custody. Owing to strict censorship in China, the actual death toll is likely to be many times higher.
The 610 Office was set up in 1999 for the sole purpose of persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. It was disbanded between 2018 and 2019 and its functions were merged into other CCP organs, according to internal documents obtained by The Epoch Times.
Republican Lawmakers Call for Action
In response to the alleged bribery scheme against Falun Gong, two Republican lawmakers are calling for the government to confront China’s actions in the United States.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) led a letter to Garland and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in October last year, following a report from Spanish human rights group Safeguard Defenders exposing China’s New York-based police station. The group released an updated report two months later, stating that the station in New York was just one of four known Chinese police stations in the United States.
Noting that the Chinese police station in New York was reportedly helping Chinese authorities coerce the regime’s targets to go back to China, Banks wondered at the time whether the facility had received U.S. approval to establish the premise and stressed there “should be no room for the Chinese government to exercise extraterritorial law enforcement unilaterally on U.S. soil.”
He believes that the Biden administration could have acted faster.
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