The New York resident fled China after being imprisoned for collaborating in actions that led to Tiananmen protests.
United States prosecutors have charged a New York resident who took half within the Chinese language pro-democracy motion that resulted within the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown with spying for China.
The Division of Justice (DoJ) stated on Wednesday that Yuanjun Tang was charged with appearing as an agent for China’s Ministry of State Safety (MSS) from 2018 to 2023, and “making materially false statements” to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Yuanjun had offered the MSS, the nation’s principal intelligence company, with info on “people and teams” seen as “doubtlessly opposed” to China’s pursuits, together with “outstanding US-based Chinese language democracy activists and dissidents”, the DoJ stated in a press release.
The 67-year-old had used “a selected e-mail account, encrypted chats, textual content messages and audio and video calls” to relay info to his handler, stated the assertion. He had later “falsely claimed” to FBI officers that he was now not in a position to entry the e-mail account.
Yuanjun, a local of China’s northeastern Jilin province, had been sentenced by the Chinese language authorities to twenty years in jail for participating within the 1989 democracy motion that resulted within the lethal Tiananmen Sq. crackdown in Beijing, serving eight years earlier than being launched.
He remained lively in advocating for democracy in China and was repeatedly detained, questioned and harassed by the authorities earlier than fleeing to Taiwan, in response to a Taipei-based rights group that helped along with his asylum bid in 2002.
Having been granted asylum within the US, he later grew to become a citizen. The DoJ assertion described how he “usually participated in occasions with fellow PRC dissidents”, main a nonprofit organisation devoted to selling democracy in China.
A spokesperson for the Chinese language embassy to the US stated he was unaware of the small print of the case.
China firmly opposed “groundlessly slandering and smearing” of the nation, the spokesperson stated.