Tag: chinatown

Dozens of demonstrators protested outside a Chinatown building housing a foreign police station accused of harassing and spying on Chinese nationals in the city.

More than 60 protestors gathered Saturday morning outside 107 East Broadway where the ChangLe Association Inc, a non-profit, owns and operates a “service station” above a noodle shop where security experts say operatives conduct surveillance against dissidents in the Chinese community.

“It’s a very serious problem in the Chinese community,” said Toni Cai, one of the protestors. Cai is a pro-democracy activist imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party twice in China for promoting free speech. He immigrated to the US in 2000, he told The Post.

“The CCP has coerced the Chinese community severely and has a large influence on them here in the state, through American and Asian-American politicians,” he said. “I am very worried, but I want to support the community leaders who are honest and openly against what the CCP is doing.”

Jing Zhang, founder and executive director of Women’s Rights in China, echoed the thought as she joined the protesters outside the Lower Manhattan building. “People need to support each other,” she said “We all came here to be free.”

The Manhattan station is part of a web of more than 100 such law enforcement offices set up around the world by the People’s Republic of China, ostensibly to help Chinese nationals renew their government-issued identification and drivers’ licenses.

But the stations have more “sinister” purposes, such as spying on the Chinese diaspora for the Chinese Communist Party, according to a recent whistle-blower report.

“Openly labeled as overseas police service stations … they contribute to ‘resolutely cracking down on all kinds of illegal and criminal activities involving overseas Chinese,’” according to a September report by Safeguard Defenders, a Madrid-based human rights group that documents Chinese repression around the world.

The stations also participate in “intimidation, harassment, detention or imprisonment” to spy on dissenters and return migrants to China, according to the report.

“We Chinese are very angry at local government for their appeasement policy,” said Quiam Jiu, who was at the protest with his daughter, Zhao Yue Auiam. “They let the CCP repress freedom and human rights activities. We want local government to have high pressure policy on CCP agents.”

Last year, New York City Mayor Eric Adams was a guest of honor at a gala dinner sponsored by the charity that operates the Chinatown police station, The Post revealed.

“CCP agents are everywhere,” said Ziyun Huang, who was also at the Saturday protest. “When all the human rights groups have protests and demonstrations, the CCP will come and harass people.

“The CCP affects the average Chinese American tremendously,” Huang continued. “The party is always in the back of their mind. Everything they do is psychological. CCP to the Chinese is like the weather — they are always in the background,”