Has anyone else out there been following the stories of Chinese consulate/embassy staff defections? The first one occurred right in front of our eyes on June 4th in Sydney, Australia - the day we showed up in town. We were at the Tiananmen Square Massacre Anniversary rally with other Epoch Times staff when Chen Yonglin, First Secretary from the consulate in Sydney, shocked everyone by publicly announcing that he had defected. Apparently, about a week earlier, he had snuck out of the consulate compound with his wife and 6-year old daughter and went to Aussie Immigration to seek asylum. When the officer on duty picked up the phone and called the Chinese embassy he turned tail and ran, finally surfacing in public at the rally. He's now spilled every bean imaginable about Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spy networks being run through overseas missions especially concerning monitoring, harassing and trying to intimidate Falun Gong practitioners and other people the CCP doesn't like. Australia finally gave him a permanent protection visa a month after he came looking for one and last week, he gave "explosive" testimony at a US Congress sub-committee that had invited him to testify.


Just days after Chen came out, Hao Fengjun, a defector from the CCP's secret police, surfaced with even more evidence of spying and the inner workings of China's gestapo-like 6-10 office where he worked (that the CCP denies exists). Before he left, he filled memory sticks with damning classified info to give to Western governments. Hao shared some of the documents with the media, and a friend of ours in Toronto was shown an entire dossier on herself, including private discussions of a business she planned to start.

Since then, there has been a string of other dispirited CCP people who can't stomach the regime anymore and are willing to risk all and defect to let the world know what's going on. Today, news of the latest one came out. He's from the embassy in Ottawa. No one too high ranking - he's a hairdresser. Does it seem strange to anyone else that that an embassy would bring hairdressers from the home country? Hardly essential personnel. Apparently, life in the compounds is so controlled that you can't read non-sanctioned news, leave for the night, or even get a haircut on the outside. Makes sense, everyone knows that barbers always have the real scoop...

This entry was posted on Monday, August 01, 2005 at 5:35 p.m.. You can skip to the end and leave a response.