Wu Wenxin thought there was something unusual about the way John Z., a man recently indicted for spying for the Chinese secret police, often behaved. At large-scale meetings, for example, while most Falun Gong practitioners sat and listened with interest to the experiences of other adherents, Mr. Z. would be outside, talking to as many people as possible.
“Now I suspect that, possibly, he was doing this to collect information for a report,” Mr. Wu, the head of the German Falun Dafa Association [also known as Falun Gong], said in a telephone interview with The Epoch Times. “Normally a Falun Gong cultivator, when participating in a Fa conference, will generally want to listen to those sharing about their cultivation experiences. He didn’t have this custom.”
He had other customs, instead, like forwarding every e-mail from Falun Gong e-mail lists to the 610 Office in China. The 610 Office is an extralegal agency of the Chinese Communist Party with sweeping powers that was founded on June 10, 1999. It coordinates and carries out the persecution of tens of millions of Falun Gong believers in China.
Mr. Z.’s case came to the public on Jan. 31 when Germany’s top prosecutor published a press release that he had been indicted on Jan. 17 for spying on Falun Gong practitioners in Germany.
“Now I suspect that, possibly, he was doing this to collect information for a report,” Mr. Wu, the head of the German Falun Dafa Association [also known as Falun Gong], said in a telephone interview with The Epoch Times. “Normally a Falun Gong cultivator, when participating in a Fa conference, will generally want to listen to those sharing about their cultivation experiences. He didn’t have this custom.”
He had other customs, instead, like forwarding every e-mail from Falun Gong e-mail lists to the 610 Office in China. The 610 Office is an extralegal agency of the Chinese Communist Party with sweeping powers that was founded on June 10, 1999. It coordinates and carries out the persecution of tens of millions of Falun Gong believers in China.
Mr. Z.’s case came to the public on Jan. 31 when Germany’s top prosecutor published a press release that he had been indicted on Jan. 17 for spying on Falun Gong practitioners in Germany.
Falun Gong is an ancient Chinese spiritual practice with five slow-motion exercises. The adherents cultivate—that is, seek to improve—themselves by living according to the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.
“Falun Gong welcomes anyone, any time,” says Mr. Wu. “If you study Falun Gong, you’re welcome to come.” This makes any potential spy’s work pretty easy. Added to that, Mr. Z had joined in the practice of Falun Gong in Germany from the beginning, and was thus easily able to know most of the goings-on of the Falun Gong community there.
That was of much interest to Chinese intelligence agents, who conduct wide-scale surveillance of practitioners around the world.
In preparation for the July 2010 visit to China by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, her administration decided they wanted to send an informal message to the Chinese leadership. The influential weekly publication Der Spiegel got a tip off from German counterespionage about Chinese spying in Germany, and a detailed article was published on June 30.
It said that “Dan Sun” had gone to the Chinese Embassy in Berlin in 2005 to apply for a visa. The case officer who dealt with his application is believed by German intelligence to be a member of the “Chinese Stasi”—the Stasi was the secret police of the communist government in East Germany. She arranged a meeting between Sun and “Chinese experts” about a “research project” on meditation. The meeting took place in 2006. At dinner Sun was engaged in a conversation that stretched late into the evening. He was drawn into a false friendship with a man deeply engaged in the persecution of the movement in mainland China.
“Dan Sun” is actually John Z. The man with whom John Z. met was Xiaohua Z., a head of the 610 Office who carries the rank of vice minister. Xiaohua Z. was posing as a representative of a university for traditional Chinese medicine in Shanghai.
“The fact that the Chinese government went to the trouble of flying in the head of the anti-Falun Gong unit from Shanghai to recruit a source in Germany demonstrates how important fighting the movement is to the government,” Der Spiegel reported. “It also points to the extremely aggressive approach that is sometimes being taken by the Chinese intelligence agencies.”
“Falun Gong welcomes anyone, any time,” says Mr. Wu. “If you study Falun Gong, you’re welcome to come.” This makes any potential spy’s work pretty easy. Added to that, Mr. Z had joined in the practice of Falun Gong in Germany from the beginning, and was thus easily able to know most of the goings-on of the Falun Gong community there.
That was of much interest to Chinese intelligence agents, who conduct wide-scale surveillance of practitioners around the world.
In preparation for the July 2010 visit to China by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, her administration decided they wanted to send an informal message to the Chinese leadership. The influential weekly publication Der Spiegel got a tip off from German counterespionage about Chinese spying in Germany, and a detailed article was published on June 30.
It said that “Dan Sun” had gone to the Chinese Embassy in Berlin in 2005 to apply for a visa. The case officer who dealt with his application is believed by German intelligence to be a member of the “Chinese Stasi”—the Stasi was the secret police of the communist government in East Germany. She arranged a meeting between Sun and “Chinese experts” about a “research project” on meditation. The meeting took place in 2006. At dinner Sun was engaged in a conversation that stretched late into the evening. He was drawn into a false friendship with a man deeply engaged in the persecution of the movement in mainland China.
“Dan Sun” is actually John Z. The man with whom John Z. met was Xiaohua Z., a head of the 610 Office who carries the rank of vice minister. Xiaohua Z. was posing as a representative of a university for traditional Chinese medicine in Shanghai.
“The fact that the Chinese government went to the trouble of flying in the head of the anti-Falun Gong unit from Shanghai to recruit a source in Germany demonstrates how important fighting the movement is to the government,” Der Spiegel reported. “It also points to the extremely aggressive approach that is sometimes being taken by the Chinese intelligence agencies.”
Next: Doctor of Chinese medicine had transferred information to agents for years
Mr. John Z., a 54-year-old doctor of Chinese medicine, had transferred information to these agents for years, from as early as 2006, prosecutors say. “All the e-mails. He’s a veteran practitioner, so his names are on all the lists. Everything,” Mr. Wu said. “The activities we hold, discussions about Falun Gong and so forth.”
Mr. Z. also often traveled to China, and that’s what caught the attention of Germany’s domestic intelligence service. Why, they thought, would a Falun Gong practitioner regularly travel to China, where the practice is persecuted? Other practitioners were unaware of these jaunts.
Investigators from the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (“Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz” in German, or BfV), the agency responsible for counterespionage in Germany, confronted Mr. Z. openly in April 2010 with the suspicion of him being a spy, and searched his home. After that he stopped interacting with the Chinese agents.
German investigators had previously visited Mr. Z.’s residence in October 2009 to let him know that he was being monitored. He made at that time many of the same arguments he would later make to Mr. Wu and other Falun Gong practitioners in Germany.
“He completely negates it. He doesn’t deny that he met with heads of the 610 Office, but he says he didn’t know they were 610 agents,” Mr. Wu says. “He said he sent them e-mails and material, but that it was not to spy but to show that Falun Gong practitioners are good, and that he hopes that through understanding this they will stop persecuting Falun Gong. That’s the explanation he gave me.”
But Mr. Wu didn’t believe that, because Mr. Z had been sending all the e-mails for years, not just some, had set up an e-mail account that Chinese agents accessed for the purpose, and often traveled to China for meetings, among other anomalous behaviors.
Mr. Z. was one of the earliest Falun Gong practitioners in Germany, beginning in the late 1990s. He came to Germany from China in the early 1990s and is now a permanent resident and citizen. The case is the first time someone in Germany has been accused of spying on Falun Gong. Many practitioners in Germany don’t know what to think. Some want to believe he’s innocent, and somehow misunderstood what was happening; others say that he did what no practitioner should do under any circumstance—he aided those who are persecuting Falun Gong in China.
The German BfV has published reports analyzing the tactics of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence agencies. An important one is to make friends and to “instrumentalize nonprofessionals,” meaning to have the victims believe that they are dealing with people actually opposed to the CCP, and thus doing something good. “It’s their aim to abuse people unknowingly as spies,” the agency’s 2007 report said.
The BfV report says that when it comes to espionage of the economy, Chinese agents act carefully and deliberately. But when it comes to suppressing the CCPs “enemies” abroad, such as Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Falun Gong adherents, they dispense with the niceties. The report lists specific cases over the years. They devote eight pages to Chinese spying in 2009, compared to two pages in 2007.
The German court in Celle, the district where Mr. Z. lives, will decide who prosecutes the case in three to four months. The case is being treated seriously by German prosecutors. Espionage can be punished with a prison sentence of up to five years.
For Falun Gong practitioners in Germany, the focus is not so much on Mr. Z. as such, but on the operations of the CCP. “People should know that the CCP is evil and will do anything to achieve its objectives. They won’t respect any country’s sovereignty or laws,” Mr. Wu said.
“Further, this shows that they’re very scared of Falun Gong,” Mr. Wu said. “Falun Gong practitioners just cultivate truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. That a political regime is so scared of people who cultivate truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance just shows that the regime itself has some big problems.”
Mr. John Z., a 54-year-old doctor of Chinese medicine, had transferred information to these agents for years, from as early as 2006, prosecutors say. “All the e-mails. He’s a veteran practitioner, so his names are on all the lists. Everything,” Mr. Wu said. “The activities we hold, discussions about Falun Gong and so forth.”
Mr. Z. also often traveled to China, and that’s what caught the attention of Germany’s domestic intelligence service. Why, they thought, would a Falun Gong practitioner regularly travel to China, where the practice is persecuted? Other practitioners were unaware of these jaunts.
Investigators from the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (“Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz” in German, or BfV), the agency responsible for counterespionage in Germany, confronted Mr. Z. openly in April 2010 with the suspicion of him being a spy, and searched his home. After that he stopped interacting with the Chinese agents.
German investigators had previously visited Mr. Z.’s residence in October 2009 to let him know that he was being monitored. He made at that time many of the same arguments he would later make to Mr. Wu and other Falun Gong practitioners in Germany.
“He completely negates it. He doesn’t deny that he met with heads of the 610 Office, but he says he didn’t know they were 610 agents,” Mr. Wu says. “He said he sent them e-mails and material, but that it was not to spy but to show that Falun Gong practitioners are good, and that he hopes that through understanding this they will stop persecuting Falun Gong. That’s the explanation he gave me.”
But Mr. Wu didn’t believe that, because Mr. Z had been sending all the e-mails for years, not just some, had set up an e-mail account that Chinese agents accessed for the purpose, and often traveled to China for meetings, among other anomalous behaviors.
Mr. Z. was one of the earliest Falun Gong practitioners in Germany, beginning in the late 1990s. He came to Germany from China in the early 1990s and is now a permanent resident and citizen. The case is the first time someone in Germany has been accused of spying on Falun Gong. Many practitioners in Germany don’t know what to think. Some want to believe he’s innocent, and somehow misunderstood what was happening; others say that he did what no practitioner should do under any circumstance—he aided those who are persecuting Falun Gong in China.
The German BfV has published reports analyzing the tactics of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence agencies. An important one is to make friends and to “instrumentalize nonprofessionals,” meaning to have the victims believe that they are dealing with people actually opposed to the CCP, and thus doing something good. “It’s their aim to abuse people unknowingly as spies,” the agency’s 2007 report said.
The BfV report says that when it comes to espionage of the economy, Chinese agents act carefully and deliberately. But when it comes to suppressing the CCPs “enemies” abroad, such as Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Falun Gong adherents, they dispense with the niceties. The report lists specific cases over the years. They devote eight pages to Chinese spying in 2009, compared to two pages in 2007.
The German court in Celle, the district where Mr. Z. lives, will decide who prosecutes the case in three to four months. The case is being treated seriously by German prosecutors. Espionage can be punished with a prison sentence of up to five years.
For Falun Gong practitioners in Germany, the focus is not so much on Mr. Z. as such, but on the operations of the CCP. “People should know that the CCP is evil and will do anything to achieve its objectives. They won’t respect any country’s sovereignty or laws,” Mr. Wu said.
“Further, this shows that they’re very scared of Falun Gong,” Mr. Wu said. “Falun Gong practitioners just cultivate truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. That a political regime is so scared of people who cultivate truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance just shows that the regime itself has some big problems.”
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