On Tuesday, United States Senators introduced a bipartisan bill to strengthen penalties against foreign government agents threatening American citizens on home soil. This move aims to counteract the Chinese Communist Party’s “National Unity Law” and to address the transnational repression carried out by officials from the CCP, Iran, and other countries.
The bill was jointly proposed by Democratic Senator Adam Schiff and Republican Senator John Curtis in direct response to the implementation of the CCP’s “National Unity Law” on July 1. The CCP law provides legal grounds for carrying out transnational repression.
According to Senate staff members, the CCP’s “National Unity Law” was a direct factor behind the introduction of the U.S. “Stop Transnational Repression Act.”
If the “Stop Transnational Repression Act” becomes U.S. law, it will, for the first time, provide a federal definition for such crimes and potentially increase the maximum prison sentence for convicted individuals by up to 10 years.
Schiff stated, “This is a national threat that both parties are working together to address. Reports indicate that this threat is expanding, with countries like China making shameless attempts to intimidate dissenters against their regime.”
Curtis described transnational repression as “an attack on our sovereignty and freedom.”
Some Chinese-American communities in the U.S. who oppose the CCP, as well as democracy activists and supporters of Taiwan, Tibet, and the Uighurs, have complained of harassment, surveillance, and intimidation by agents dispatched by Beijing.
The “Stop Transnational Repression Act” defines transnational repression as any act of harassment, coercion, or threats by foreign agents or proxies against individuals, including the use of force or fear of death. The bill incorporates this term into U.S. law to “enhance deterrence against foreign actors.”
The non-profit human rights organization “Freedom House” has stated that of the recorded global cases of such repression, China has been a key player behind the scenes, with 319 such repression incidents attributed to China since 2014.
Following federal prosecutors in the U.S. charging a New York man with operating a “secret police force” on behalf of Beijing in Manhattan, the man was convicted in May for acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government.
After a four-day trial and one day of closed-door deliberations, the jury on May 13 found 64-year-old Harry Lu guilty of two charges: “illegally acting as a foreign government agent” and “obstruction of justice by deleting evidence.” The charge of “conspiring to act as a foreign agent” was judged not proven.
Moreover, this year saw two men sentenced to 10 and 15 years in prison, respectively, after the Department of Justice stated that they were part of an Iranian government plot to surveil and kill an Iranian-American human rights activist.