2023-06-01 15:12:03
NEW YORK (AP) — An American detective and two Chinese men clashed with jurors Wednesday in the first trial stemming from U.S. claims that the Chinese government has tried to harass, intimidate and coerce dissidents and other overseas Chinese to return home.
Michael McMahon, Zheng Congying and Zhu Yong are accused of being part of a scheme to harass a former Chinese official, his wife and their adult daughter to return to their home country, whose government alleges the former official took bribes.
“If he is willing to return to China and spend 10 years in prison, his wife and children will be fine,” read a translated note that Zheng helped tape to the door of the New Jersey man’s home in 2018, though, according to his lawyer, Zheng quickly thought better of it and removed the note.
Prosecutors say it was one of a series of pressure tactics that included calling the man’s then-octogenarian father to warn his relatives would suffer if he did not return home.
“The victim and her family suffered years of harassment,” Assistant United States Attorney Irisa Chen said in an opening statement. “It is part of a public initiative by the Chinese government to force people living abroad to return to China once morest their will.”
The defendants, who are facing charges of acting as illegal agents of China, say they did not know they were complying with orders from Beijing in what is known as Operation “Fox Hunt.” Their lawyers say the men believed that they were helping to collect a private debt.
The trial comes as tensions rise between Beijing and Washington. This year, a Chinese spy balloon flew over the United States, US law enforcement agencies accused China of creating a secret police station in New York, and — as recently as Tuesday — the US military complained that a Chinese fighter jet carried out a “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” near a US reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea.
1685633019
#trial #Chinas #harassment #expatriates #begins
