"Secret Operatives in Canada
In his time with the 610 office, Hao dealt with hundreds of correspondents from spies stationed overseas who were collecting information on Falun Gong (and later other religious groups including overseas Christian organizations). The reports came primarily from the Pacific Rim—the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Hao says that at least a few of the reports are based on recordings of private conversations between Falun Gong practitioners in Canada. He estimates that Canada has a similar number of spies as Australia--roughly one thousand.
No Surprise for Falun Gong
Lucy Zhou, a volunteer spokesperson for Falun Gong in Ottawa, wasn’t surprised to hear all this. She says that Falun Gong practitioners have known China was sending agents to monitor and harass them since the persecution began in 1999.
Zhou lists incidents from across Canada where Falun Gong followers and sympathizers were photographed or videotaped by Chinese agents. Some later received threatening phone calls or discovered their names were on Chinese government blacklists.
Last February in Calgary, the visa office at the Chinese consulate reportedly told a Chinese woman that the consulate had a list of every Falun Gong practitioner in the city and no one could obtain a visa if they continued to practice Falun Gong. Similar claims were made by the Embassy in Ottawa in 2003.
An Australian Falun Gong practitioner, David Liang, was shot shortly after arriving in Johannesburg South Africa last year where he planned to file a lawsuit against two visiting Chinese officials involved in the persecution of Falun Gong in China.
Liang’s car had been vandalized shortly before leaving for South Africa and his travel companion said he had received threatening phone calls. Liang says he has “no doubt” that the Chinese officials had hired gunmen to kill him and that they knew about his plans from spies in Australia.
Rob Anders, MP for Calgary West, has followed the story of Falun Gong since 1999 when China began the crackdown. He says he’s met Falun Gong practitioners who were spied on, had business deals sabotaged, and were even physically assaulted by Chinese special agents.
“It’s just so obvious there’s a spy network going on,” says Anders.
"It’s serious. Canada, Australia, and the United States all need to take these things much more seriously than they have been…it needs to be dealt with publicly.”Meanwhile a bit of history-
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But Read appealed his dismissal and in 2003, the RCMP’s External Review Committee issued a scathing indictment over the handling of the Hong Kong affair. In its decision the committee wrote the “the RCMP was walking on eggshells whenever it conducted an investigation into activities at a Canadian mission abroad and basically restricted to what the Department of Foreign Affairs was willing to allow it to investigate.
“What is at issue was a deliberate choice made by the RCMP not to pursue an investigation into possible wrongdoing even though the numerous examples had been drawn to its attention of incidents that suggested an immigration fraud ring was operating within the very premises of the mission and possibly involved employees of the Government of Canada.”
