A “political manipulation”. The tone rose Tuesday, April 18 in Beijing following the operation of American justice against suspects accused of having opened an underground Chinese police station in New York and of cyber-harassment of dissidents.
“China firmly opposes the defamation, denigration, political manipulation by the United States, as well as malicious accusations regarding so-called transnational suppression,” said Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Chinese foreign affairs.
“We call on the United States to immediately reflect on its actions, to abandon its Cold War mentality and ideological biases, to immediately cease the resulting bad practices, political manipulation and smear operations against the China,” he added.
Clandestine operations
American justice had announced the day before the arrest of two Americans of Chinese origin in New York and the indictment of several dozen members of the Chinese security services as part of an investigation into what it considers to be operations. illegal Chinese.
Lu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, the two suspects arrested, are suspected of having participated in the operations of an underground police station in the heart of Chinatown, on the island of Manhattan, according to the federal prosecutor of Brooklyn, Breon Peace.
In a separate investigation, 34 Chinese “Ministry of Public Security officials” between the ages of 26 and 52, all believed to be residing in their countries, were charged with cyber-harassment activities of pro-democracy activists and “dissidents” outside of China. Chinese borders, “including right here in New York,” the prosecutor said.
Finally, six other officials from China’s Ministry of Public Security and “two members of China’s Cyberspace Administration” have also been charged in a case uncovered in 2020, in which a Chinese employee of the Zoom company acted to disrupt online meetings of activists, in particular to commemorate the bloody repression of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in 1989.