WASHINGTON: A New York resident who took half in China’s 1989 democracy motion was charged on Wednesday (Aug 21) with working as an unlawful agent for the Chinese language authorities in the USA, the justice division stated.
Tang Yuanjun, 67, swam to a Taiwan-controlled island greater than 20 years in the past earlier than being granted political asylum by the US.
He was charged on Wednesday with performing as an agent for the Individuals’s Republic of China within the US from 2018 to 2023, the justice division stated in an announcement.
Tang accomplished “duties on the path of the PRC’s Ministry of State Safety (MSS), which is the PRC’s principal civilian intelligence company”, the division stated.
Tang supplied MSS officers with info on “people and teams considered by the PRC as doubtlessly opposed” to its pursuits, together with “outstanding US-based Chinese language democracy activists and dissidents”.
He’s additionally accused of mendacity to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for claiming he now not had entry to an electronic mail account used to speak along with his MSS handler.
He was arrested on Wednesday and was scheduled to look earlier than a district decide.
Tang, a local of China’s northeastern Jilin province, had been sentenced to twenty years for collaborating within the 1989 democracy motion that resulted within the lethal Tiananmen Sq. crackdown in Beijing.
He was launched after serving eight years.
Tang remained energetic 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.
