On Friday (Dec. 18), a Brooklyn federal court charged Xinjiang Jin (also known as “Julien Jin”), a Chinese employee of a U.S. company, and issued a warrant for his arrest for allegedly conspiring to commit transnational harassment and illegally creating false identities for others. If convicted, Jin faces up to 10 years in prison.
Jin is an employee of a U.S. multinational telecommunications company (hereinafter referred to as Company A) working out of a branch office in mainland China. He is accused of disrupting videoconferences held in May and June of this year to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which were conducted through Company A’s video software.
The indictment does not name the U.S. company.
Zhou Fenglock, a Chinese dissident living in the United States who was censored by Zoom during the June 4 attacks this year, confirmed to The Epoch Times’ partner media outlet NTD that the FBI informed him today that a Zoom employee has been indicted.
Documents filed in Brooklyn federal court show that Jin’s employer is based in San Jose, California, while Zoom is based in California.
Chinese employee disrupts U.S. videoconference
The indictment states that Jin was the primary contact for the Chinese Communist Party’s intelligence services at Company A, and that he provided relevant information or interfered with certain videoconferences under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party. His work included providing information about Company A users and meetings to the CCP, and in some cases he provided the CCP with information about overseas users such as IP addresses, names, and emails.
Kim was also responsible for censoring Company A’s video calls and monitoring political and religious topics that the CCP deemed to be sensitive.
From January 2019 to the present, under the direct command and authority of CCP officials, Jin and associates have used Company A’s systems to censor individuals located in the United States and around the world to monitor their political and religious speech.
Under the control of the CCP, Kim and associates have terminated at least four videoconferences held on Company A’s platform on the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, mostly attended by users in the United States, including dissidents who survived the massacre, some of whom live in Queens, New York and Long Island.
Falsifying Evidence to Help Communist China Threaten and Persecute Dissidents
Jin and associates identified conference participants and disrupted meetings, and created excuses to cover up their true actions. In May 2020 and June 2020, Kim and co-conspirators disrupted meetings where politically sensitive topics were being talked about, and they entered the meetings to collect evidence in an attempt to prove that there was misconduct at the meetings, when in fact there was no misconduct. King and his co-conspirators then fabricated evidence that the meetings violated the company’s “service agreement,” and then King had a U.S.-based executive of Company A terminate the meetings and suspend or cancel the participants’ accounts.
How exactly did they do this? The indictment says that King’s associates created fake email accounts and fake A Corp. accounts in the names of attendees, including dissidents, to fabricate “evidence” that slandered the organizers and attendees as terrorists, inciting violence or distributing child pornography.
King and his associates said the meetings were about child abuse or exploitation, terrorism, racism or incitement to violence, and provided screenshots of attendee profiles – such as a masked man holding a flag that appeared to be that of the Islamic State terrorist group. Jin used this “evidence” to convince the U.S.-based executives to take action.
The indictment also alleges that Chinese Communist authorities used information provided by Kim to retaliate and intimidate participants or their families living in China, and detained at least one person who planned to speak at the conference. In another case, the Chinese Communist Party approached family members of participants and instructed them to tell the participants to stop making so-called “anti-government statements” and to “support socialism and the Chinese Communist Party.
“Foreign Companies in China Forced to Cooperate with Communist Oppression”
John C. Demers, assistant attorney general for national security, said “companies with significant business interests in China are under the deterrent influence of the Chinese Communist Party.” He said the Chinese Communist Party is stifling freedom and stifling speech in China, the United States and elsewhere in the world to the extent it can.
“For companies doing business like this in China, it can mean that executives are forced to further cooperate with (the CCP’s) high-handedness, which runs counter to the values that allow that company to thrive here (in the United States).”
FBI Director Christopher Wray said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) remains committed to protecting the free speech of all Americans. As the indictment states, “The vicious actions of the Chinese Communist Party’s intelligence services directly violate freedom and support regimes with values different from those of democracy.”
He also reminded the American people that “the Chinese Communist Party will not hesitate to use American companies operating in mainland China to further its international designs, including suppressing free speech.”
Acting U.S. Attorney Seth D. DuCharme said, “(Kim) worked closely with the Chinese (Communist) government and members of its intelligence community to help the Chinese (Communist) government silence speech on political and religious matters for users of the U.S. technology companies’ platforms.
“Kim actively committed crimes and attempted to mislead others in the company to help the Chinese (CCP) authorities censor and punish U.S. users for their free political speech, and today’s allegations clearly demonstrate that U.S. tech companies’ employees in China have caused the company and its customers to be badly influenced by the CCP.”
He said that whether these threats come from inside or outside the United States, they (the U.S. government) want to protect the American people from threats and enjoy the freedom to express their political views and religious beliefs.
Demers and Ducharme also expressed appreciation for A’s cooperation in the investigation.
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