A Boston resident allegedly worked with Chinese government officials over about four years to keep tabs on Chinese activists and dissidents in the area who were calling for pro-democracy reforms in the communist nation, federal prosecutors said on Friday.
Liang Litang (梁利堂), 63, a US citizen who lives in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood, was charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government and acting as an agent of a foreign government without notice to the US attorney general, the US attorney’s office in Boston said.
Liang, who was arrested Tuesday, was released on Thursday on US$25,000 bail with electronic monitoring after pleading not guilty, court documents showed.
Photo: EPA-EFE
He also surrendered his passport and was ordered not to leave Massachusetts or have any contact with government officials from the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Liang was accused of “providing the PRC government with information on Boston-area individuals and organizations; organizing a counterprotest in the United States against pro-democracy dissidents; providing photographs of and information about US-based dissidents to PRC government officials; and providing the names of potential recruits to the PRC’s Ministry of Public Security,” one of the documents said.
The goal was to “covertly advance the PRC government’s goals and agenda within the United States,” indictment said.
China has been accused in other cases of trying to interfere with democracy advocates in the US who are critical of Beijing.
Last month, two men were accused by US authorities of helping establish a secret police station in New York on behalf of the Chinese government, and about three dozen Chinese People’s Armed Police Force officers were charged with using social media to harass US-based dissidents.
Liang’s cooperation with the Chinese government allegedly started in 2018 and lasted until at least last year, prosecutors said.
In one case, Liang allegedly sent a Chinese government official pictures and video footage of a student activist he believed was responsible for destroying Chinese flags during a 2018 protest in Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood, they said.
Liang allegedly organized an event in Boston in 2018 that was attended by at least two Chinese government officials, one of whom allegedly asked Liang for the name of a person who attended and worked for an elected Boston official.
Liang allegedly provided the name as requested, authorities said.
Court documents did not name the elected official.
Liang allegedly provided video footage of a dissident attending the “Boston Stands with Hong Kong” march in August 2019 and the following month sent photographs of dissidents in front of the Boston Public Library to a Chinese government official, calling them a “bunch of clowns trying to cause trouble,” prosecutors said.
Liang allegedly had contacts with senior Chinese diplomats in the US, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security and the Chinese United Front Work Department, which reports directly to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party to further the party’s objectives, prosecutors said.
He allegedly visited China in September last year, where he attended events to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the PRC.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
RSS