40 Officers Of China’s National Police Charged With Harassing Natives Using Fake Social Media Accounts

Washington DC

As many as 44 people, including 40 officers of China's National Police, have been charged with various crimes related to efforts by the national police of the People's Republic of China (PRC) to harass Chinese nationals living in New York and elsewhere in the United States, according to an official press release from the US Department of Justice.
The two criminal complaints filed against them, by the US Attorney's Office, were unsealed on Monday in the federal court in Brooklyn. The defendants, including 40 MPS officers and two officials in the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), had reportedly perpetrated transnational repression schemes targeting US residents whose political views and actions were disapproved by the PRC government, like advocating for democracy in the PRC, the release said. The defendants engaged in two schemes where they created and used fake social media accounts to harass and threaten PRC dissidents abroad and attempted to stifle their free speech on the platform of a US telecoms corporation (Company-1). It is suspected that the defendants accused in these schemes live in the PRC or another country in Asia and are still at large.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew G Olsen of the Justice Department's National Security Division said, These cases demonstrate the lengths the PRC government will go to silence and harass U.S. persons who exercise their fundamental rights to speak out against PRC oppression, including by unlawfully exploiting a U.S.-based technology company. He added, These actions violate our laws and are an affront to our democratic values and basic human rights.