Chinese secret police collect personal details and hire local agents in trying to force targeted individuals to return to China.
The Chinese regime hires agents to go after dissidents all over the world in a bid to get them back to China, a former spy and victims have revealed.
The spy, who recently defected to Australia, gave the name Eric. For 15 years, he took orders from secret police in China to target dissidents in countries such as Cambodia, Thailand, India, and Australia.
One of his targets is Li Guixin, a practitioner of the meditation discipline Falun Gong, which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1999 made a goal to eliminate. Mr. Li has experienced at least five arbitrary arrests and detention over his faith before he fled to Thailand in 2014 with his wife and teenage daughter.
“Right now, we need you to confirm whether we are looking at the right apartment,” reads a screenshot Eric shared with The Epoch Times.
“Observe what’s inside and around the apartment; take some photos and videos. Organize what you see later so that we can plan our stakeout,” Eric’s handler instructed him in a message dated Feb. 16, 2021.
The handler sent a series of photos. Some showed Mr. Li and his family in yellow shirts meditating or in Falun Gong events. Others included headshots from their identity cards used in China and their Thailand address from around 2017.
Mr. Li, after reviewing these photos, told The Epoch Times he was shocked.
While many photos are from what his friends had shared on social media, at least one family photo was never posted on the internet,
“Where did they get it?” he said, adding that he felt he was in a movie. It was the first time he was able to confirm the inner suspicions that led him to move multiple times in recent years.
“It’s like, this is for real,” he said.
Eric couldn’t confirm if—and how many—other Chinese agents might be involved in targeting Mr. Li. He had taken a translator with him to inspect the location his handler gave him. He said he had minimal involvement in the case after finding out Mr. Li no longer lived there.
By Eva Fu