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| Down Under |
| Another Chinese defector turns up in Australia |
| 2005-06-10 |
| A third Chinese official has defected in Australia and already been granted refugee status after revealing he witnessed a dissident being tortured to death in China, his lawyer said. The unnamed official was a senior officer in a branch of the Chinese security service known as "610" and defected after witnessing repeated human rights abuses by other agents, lawyer Bernard Collaery said on ABC television late Thursday. Collaery, a prominent lawyer and former attorney-general of the Australian Capital Territory, said the official's assertions backed up claims made earlier this week by a Chinese diplomat seeking asylum in Australia and another Chinese security agent whose defection in February has just come to light. The two other officials, Chen Yonglin from China's consulate in Sydney, and policeman Hao Fengjun, have said China has some 1,000 spies and informants in Australia, many of them monitoring the activities of dissident movements like the Falungong meditation group. Both men are seeking political asylum, claiming their lives would be in danger if forced to return home. The defections have posed a delicate problem for the government of Prime Minister John Howard, which is striving to expand political and trade ties with China. After sending out mixed signals on Chen's bid for asylum, Health Minister Tony Abbott, said Thursday the fugitive diplomat would not be sent home. "Mr. Chen is in Australia, he is being dealt with in accordance with the ordinary process of Australian immigration law, and he is at no risk of being sent back to China," said Abbott, one of Howard's closest aides. China has ridiculed claims by Chen and Hao that it was involved in widespread spying in Australia, both to obtain military and industrial secrets and to monitor expatriate Chinese dissidents. "They have on various occasions expressed views and used words which we believe are only fabrications and lies," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said on Thursday in Beijing. But Collaery told ABC's Lateline program the third defector's accounts of activities by China's "610" bureau and notably its mistreatment of Falungong practitioners confirmed the stories of Chen and Hao. "He took exception to a wide-spread torture of practitioners within his police district by this insidious gestapo apparatus that has been grafted on to the state's security processes in and throughout China," Collaery said. Collaery says the final straw for the man came when he was unable to prevent the death of a man in custody. "He hears the beating in his police station. He intervenes. He's told to go away. He goes upstairs to his office," Collaery said. "His conscience stricken, he comes back downstairs and says: 'This must stop'. And then sees this naked man with his head in a chair, his legs poking out, clearly deceased, and he's horrified by it. That's the last straw." Collaery would not identify the man for fear that harm would come to relatives still living in China. He also did not say when the man came to Australia. But he said the safe house where the man had been hiding was ransacked, presumably by Chinese agents, and that this supports claims by Hao and Chen that China maintains a network of spies in Australia. "About two months after we placed him in hiding, while he was out, his entire premises were ransacked criminally," he said. There was no immediate reaction from Australian officials on Collaery's claims. |
| Posted by:Spavirt Pheng6042 |
| #2 LOL! |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-06-10 19:01 |
| #1 LOL! ABC's Lateline yes, this is abc, with yesterday's news on LATEline. It's brilliant marketing genius. Use the word late to excite people about your news program. This is NBC, Yesterday's News, coming to you live.... |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-06-10 10:05 |