A Brooklyn federal court issued an arrest warrant on Friday for a Chinese software engineer at a U.S. technology company, accusing him of helping the Chinese Communist Party cancel at least four Zoom video conferences commemorating June 4 and providing the Chinese authorities with personal information such as emails and IP addresses of U.S. users; the information was used to intimidate and retaliate against participants in mainland China and relatives of U.S. participants in mainland China.
The FBI on Dec. 18 named Xinjiang Jing, a software engineer working in Zhejiang province for San Jose, California-based Zoom, as the man wanted for disrupting a video conference scheduled to be held on Zoom to commemorate the 31st anniversary of June 4 and for forwarding the personal information of many U.S. Zoom users to Chinese communist intelligence agencies, according to foreign media reports.
Prosecutors in the case allege that Xinjiang Jin, 39, and his associates, at the direction of the Chinese Communist Party, monitored online meetings on Zoom that the Chinese government deemed illegal, including those discussing Communist policies or religious issues on the mainland, and caused the cancellation of at least four video conferences organized by U.S. users between January 2019 and November 2020 to commemorate the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. In order to get Zoom to cancel the videoconferences and shut down the accounts of certain attendees, Jin Xinjiang falsely claimed to Zoom executives that the attendees were terrorists or inciting violence or child pornography, and they forged false emails and Zoom accounts of the attendees to support their lies.
Some of the attendees of the Zoom-cancelled online conferences commemorating the June 4 massacre were naturalized U.S. survivors of the June 4 massacre, commemorating the more than 280 victims shot and killed by the Chinese Communist Party in the Tiananmen Square massacre on the night of June 4.
If convicted, Jin Xinjiang could reportedly be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison in the United States.
Wang Dan: Chinese Communist Party Violates U.S. Sovereignty by Monitoring Chinese Americans Through Zoom
Speaking to Radio Free Asia, June Fourth Movement leader Wang Dan said the FBI’s investigation proves once again that the Chinese Communist Party is monitoring Chinese Americans through Zoom, a violation of U.S. sovereignty.
Wang Dan said they were very concerned about the repeated interference with Zoom and Zoom’s systems during the June 4 commemoration this year, and that the FBI’s investigation confirmed that someone within Zoom was indeed engaged in surveillance and even interference. More importantly, the documents released by the FBI show that the Chinese Communist Party was monitoring those who live in the United States, already have U.S. citizenship, or are green card holders. He said, “This is actually a serious violation of U.S. sovereignty, and the U.S. government should take this very seriously and respond to it forcefully.”
Recent Comments