cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/46972708 > […] > > A man who spent a decade and a half working as a Chinese spy has shared details of some of his missions with Radio-Canada, including what he knows about a Chinese dissident who died in B.C., Canada, in 2022. > > “From 2008 to 2023, my real job was to work for China’s secret police. It’s a means for political repression,” said “Eric,” who was interviewed in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. “Its main targets are dissidents who criticize the Chinese Communist Party.” > > Eric shared a variety of documents — including financial records, secret money transfers and the names of spies — with journalists from the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, of which CBC/Radio-Canada is a partner. > > The records give an unprecedented glimpse at the inner workings of China’s overseas spy operations. > > […] > > For 15 years, Eric worked for the 1st Bureau at China’s Ministry of Public Security, a unit that specializes in surveillance of dissidents abroad. He previously told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that he spied on a Japanese-based cartoonist and a YouTuber exiled in Australia. Often, he said, his cover was working for real companies in the countries where he was deployed — companies that collaborated with China’s secret police. > > […] > > In 2020, Eric said he was tasked with snooping on a dissident named Hua Yong, an artist and hardcore opponent of China’s Communist Party who eventually ended up on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast. > > […] > > After several failed attempts to flee China, Eric finally succeeded in 2023. The former spy wanted to go to Canada to claim asylum but ended up in Australia because he was able to get a tourist visa there. > > The world has a right to know what China’s secret police are up to, Eric said, adding that revealing it publicly actually buys him a measure of protection. > > Meanwhile, the police investigation into Hua’s death isn’t officially closed because three years later, the B.C. Coroners Service still hasn’t completed its report, which normally takes about 16 months. > > Eric said he’s had no contact with Canadian police but that he did confidentially send some documents to the Hogue commission, Canada’s public inquiry into foreign interference. > > “There are some strange aspects to this case that demand further investigation,” he said. >
This is by far not the only such story. Many NGOs such as Safeguard Defenders, a human rights organization focusing on China, provide deep insights in China’s transnational repression, for example in its Transnational Repression Reporting Guide.
As the article also says, China is ramping up its collective punishment of families:
… China’s CCP pressured the 70-year-old father of activist Yang Zhanqing’s to get his son to stop his rights work. After Yang, who lives in exile in the US, refused, his aged father lost his job and his home.
“Activists get used to this [CCP harassment] after being subjected to it so many times, but for people like my father, to them it’s like the world is ending,” says Yang.
Former miner Dong Jianbiao paid the ultimate price.
In 2022, he died in prison, his bruised body covered in blood. Police rushed through the cremation, forbidding the family their request for an autopsy.
The CCP punished Dong because his daughter splashed ink over a poster of Xi Jinping in 2018. She has since disappeared into the black hole of China’s illegal psychiatric detentions …
As an addition, a recent study examining China’s transnational repression on German soil says:
Dissidents are put under pressure, families are used as leverage, communities are infiltrated, and political participation is severely restricted. This policy paper analyzes China’s transnational repression and provides not only an in-depth insight into the structures and methods of repression but also outlines concrete legal and political reforms aimed at making Germany’s democracy more resilient.