Germany Investigates 3 Suspected of Spying for China

Raids were carried out on the homes and offices of the three people
By Melissa Eddy

The Chinese Embassy in Berlin. A spokesman for Germany’s federal prosecutor said the Chinese intelligence service was involved in the inquiry.

BERLIN — German authorities raided the homes and offices of three people suspected of spying for the Chinese government, officials said on Thursday, giving no details about their identities or the nature of the alleged espionage.

“This is a preliminary investigation against three known persons,” said Markus Schmitt, a spokesman for the German federal prosecutor, Peter Frank. 

None of the three have been arrested, he said.
The raid comes amid an intensifying debate in Berlin over the country’s relationship with Huawei, the Chinese technology giant used for espionage by Beijing.
On Thursday, Angela Merkel met with senior lawmakers in her party as part of continuing efforts to resolve a dispute over whether to allow Huawei to help build the country’s 5G next-generation mobile network.
Germany has been concerned about the threat posed by Chinese hackers seeking to steal information from the country’s companies, research facilities and ministries. 

But if sufficient evidence is found in the current case, it would be one of the first in years involving old-fashioned human espionage.
German officials were sifting through evidence gathered in the raids, which were carried out early Wednesday on nine homes and offices in Brussels and Berlin, as well as in the German states of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, Mr. Schmitt said.
The Chinese intelligence service is also involved in the inquiry, Mr. Schmitt said.
The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, which first reported the raids, said that the three people targeted were suspected of passing private and social information to China’s ministry of state security.
Der Spiegel said that one of the three was a German national who had worked as a diplomat for the European Union until 2017, when he switched to a well-known consulting company. 

The other two work for a different consulting company, the report said.
Although some of the searched properties are in Brussels, a spokeswoman for the Brussels-based European Commission said on Thursday that none of its premises had been searched. 

She also said it had not received any requests to work with the German authorities or to hand over any evidence.
“No searches were conducted in the premises of our buildings, we haven’t been contacted by the German authorities,” said the spokeswoman, Virginie Battu-Henriksson.
European Union diplomats are normally senior envoys from their own member states who join the bloc’s diplomatic ranks. 

Many go on to join lobby firms or think tanks after retirement. 

If proven that the suspect was indeed spying for China, it would be a first for the bloc’s foreign policy branch.
China is one of Germany’s most important trading partners, and the two countries collaborate on international issues like climate change and hold regular government-level discussions.
But the relationship has come under scrutiny since the Chinese acquired several German technology companies in 2016. 

The next year, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency accused China of using LinkedIn and other social media sites to infiltrate the government in Berlin.
A year ago, Poland arrested two people, including a Chinese employee of Huawei, and charged them with spying for Beijing.

No German Respect for Thuggish China

China rage as Joshua Wong meets German foreign minister
By Hui Min Neo with Poornima Weerasekara

Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong has met Germany’s foreign minister as he carries abroad his call to support the growing pro-democracy movement in the former British colony, a meeting slammed on Tuesday by China as “disrespectful”.

Posting a photo of himself and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on his Twitter account, the 22-year-old said they spoke on the “protest situation and our cause to free election and democracy in HK”.
Beijing reacted angrily at their meeting during an event organised by Bild daily, saying “it is extremely wrong for German media and politicians to attempt to tap into the anti-China separatist wave”.

Joshua Wong and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. 

Wong, a prominent face in Hong Kong’s growing pro-democracy protests, planned to hold talks with other German politicians during his visit to Berlin.
The activist’s visit came on the heels of Merkel’s trip to China, where she stressed Friday that the rights and freedoms of people in Hong Kong “must be guaranteed”, after meeting Li Keqiang in Beijing.
Ahead of her three-day visit to China, demonstrators in the semi-autonomous city appealed to the German chancellor to support them in her meetings with China’s leadership.
Wong himself had written an open letter to Merkel, seeking her backing.

‘Hong Kong the new Berlin’
Germany has emerged as a country of refuge for a number of Chinese dissidents in recent years, including Liu Xia, the widow of Chinese Nobel dissident Liu Xiaobo.
In May, two former Hong Kong independence activists were granted refugee status in Germany in what is one of the first cases of dissenters from the enclave receiving such protection.
Wong had arrived in Berlin late Monday after he was briefly detained in Hong Kong just before his departure to Germany following an error in his bail conditions from a previous detention.
He was among several prominent democracy advocates held late last month in a roundup by police as the city reels from more than three months of unprecedented pro-democracy protests.
Bild reported that Wong turned up late at the event it organised, but was still able to meet Maas at the gathering.

A protest on Sunday. 

In a brief speech at the event, Wong vowed to “protest until the day that we have free elections”.
“If we are now in a new Cold War, Hong Kong is the new Berlin,” he said, referring to the post-war split between communist East Berlin and the democratic West.
“‘Stand with Hong Kong’ is much more than just a mere slogan, we urge the free world to stand together with us in resisting the autocratic Chinese regime,” he added.
Wong was due to hold a public discussion on Wednesday evening at Humboldt University in Berlin and later travel to the United States.
He launched his career as an activist at just 12 years old and became the poster child of the huge pro-democracy “Umbrella Movement” protests of 2014 that failed to win any concessions from Beijing.
Wong has previously been jailed for involvement in those protests.

My town is the new Cold War's Berlin: Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong

Joshua Wong spoke to Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on protests situation, free election and democracy in Hong Kong

By Thomas Escritt

Joshua Wong spoke to Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas

BERLIN --  Comparing the struggle of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters to the role of Berlin during the Cold War, activist Joshua Wong told an audience in the German capital that his city was now a bulwark between the free world and the “dictatorship of China”.

Hong Kong's pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong attends the summer party "Bild 100" of German publisher Axel Springer at the Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany, September 9, 2019. 

The 22-year-old activist, who was in Berlin for a newspaper-sponsored event at the German parliament celebrating human rights activists around the world, pledged that protests would not be lulled into complacency by the decision of the city’s government to drop a contested new extradition law.
“If we are in a new Cold War, Hong Kong is the new Berlin,” he said in a reception space a stone’s throw from the Berlin Wall on the roof of the Reichstag building, which for decades occupied the no-man’s land between Communist East Berlin and the city’s capitalist western half.
Hong Kong has been convulsed by months of unrest since its government announced attempts to make it easier to extradite suspects to China, a move seen as a prelude to bringing the pluralistic autonomous region more in line with the mainland.
Wong, leader of the Demosisto pro-democracy movement, has become a prominent face of the protests.
“We urge the free world to stand together with us in resisting the Chinese autocratic regime,” he added, describing Chinese leader Xi Jinping as “not a president but an emperor.”
The city’s leader, Carrie Lam, announced concessions this week to try to end the protests, including formally scrapping the bill, but Wong said protesters would not be lulled into complacency.
He said they would try to hold the city’s government responsible for human rights violations committed against protesters, adding that Lim’s climb-down was a ruse to buy calm ahead of China’s Oct. 1 national day.
He had briefly been detained by Hong Kong authorities before his departure earlier in the day for breaching bail conditions following his arrest in August when he was charged along with other prominent activists with inciting and participating in an unauthorized assembly.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has just returned from a trip to China, during which she faced criticism from Germany for not engaging more directly with the Hong Kong protesters, whose cause is popular in Germany, though she did call for a peaceful solution to the Hong Kong unrest.

Liu Xia: widow of Nobel laureate arrives in Berlin after eight years under house arrest

By Lily Kuo in Beijing Philip Oltermann in Berlin

Liu Xia smiles as she arrives at Helsinki airport on her way to Berlin.

Liu Xia, the widow of the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, has arrived in Berlin, having left Beijing after almost eight years of living under house arrest and days before the anniversary of her husband’s death.
At 4.49pm (1539 BST) on Tuesday a Finnair flight carrying the poet and visual artist touched down at Tegel airport in the German capital, where Liu is reported to be seeking medical aid.
Human rights activists and friends of Liu had confirmed her departure from Beijing earlier on Tuesday. 

According to Human Rights Watch, the German government negotiated Liu’s release.
“Ever since her late husband received the Nobel peace prize while in a Chinese prison, Liu Xia was also unjustly detained. The German government deserves credit for its sustained pressure and hard work to gain Liu Xia’s release,” said Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch.
Chinese authorities have insisted that Liu, who was not formally charged with any crime, has been free to move as she wishes, but her supporters say she has been under de facto house arrest.
Liu’s husband, Liu Xiaobo, was awarded the Nobel prize in 2010 for his activism in China. 

He was jailed in 2009 for subversion, for his involvement in Charter 08, a manifesto calling for reforms. 

He died last year from liver cancer while serving an 11-year prison sentence.

People wait at Berlin airport to welcome Liu Xia. 

Patrick Poon, a China researcher for Amnesty International, said Liu had been allowed to leave China but her brother, Liu Hui, has had to remain in Beijing. 

He was convicted on fraud charges over a real-estate dispute in 2013, a case activists believed to be retribution against the family.
“It’s really wonderful that Liu Xia is finally able to leave China after suffering so much all these years,” Poon said. 

“However, it’s worrying that her brother, Liu Hui, is still kept in China. Liu Xia might not be able to speak much for fear of her brother’s safety.”

Liu Xiaobo, Nobel laureate and political prisoner, dies at 61 in Chinese custody.

Liu Hui posted on WeChat that his sister had flown to Europe to “start her new life”. 

He wrote: “I am grateful for people’s concern and assistance these past years.”
News of Liu’s release came one day after the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, met with Li Keqiang, in Bremerhaven, inviting speculation about whether the development was part of a broader diplomatic deal. 

China and Germany have in recent months become the two main targets of a US president threatening trade tariffs on industrial imports.
“Is Liu Xia’s release all about softening up the German chancellor, as one of the most important representatives of the liberal industrial nations, in order to form a joint front against Trump?”, wrote the German weekly Die Zeit. 

“It’s an ugly suspicion, but one that can’t be dismissed out of hand.”

“Of course I am very happy that finally she’s gained her freedom and could leave China, but this does not mean China has made any improvements on human rights,” said Hu Ping, a US-based editor and friend of Liu’s.
Since last year, activists, diplomats and friends of Liu have been lobbying especially hard for her release. 

Hu said Liu was told in May she may be able to leave in July. 

Li’s visit to Germany and the signing of $23.6bn (£1.98bn) in trade deals do not seem to him to be a coincidence. 

“This might be why she was able to leave now,” he said.
Another friend of Liu’s told the German news agency Dpa that Germany had been consistently lobbying for the artist’s release over the last four years and kept contact with her via its Beijing embassy. 

“Merkel’s visit [to China] in May was apparently crucial for the release,” the anonymous friend is quoted as saying.
Friends and advocates had been calling for Liu’s release so she could seek medical help for severe depression. 

In May the Chinese writer Liao Yiwu released a recording of a phone call in which Liu described the mental torture of her situation. 

“If I can’t leave, I’ll die in my home,” she said.
One of the last times she was seen in public was in July last year, when she scattered the ashes of her late husband at sea. 

While under house arrest, both of her parents died and she has been hospitalised at least twice for a heart condition.
Frances Eve, a researcher at Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said: “Hopefully she will be able to recuperate and receive much-needed medical care, but China is effectively holding her brother hostage so she may not speak out about her ordeal. The Chinese government has already shown its willingness to ruthlessly deploy collective punishment against their family.”

Chinazism

Chinese tourists detained for giving Nazi salute in Berlin
By Isaac Stanley-Becker 

BERLIN — The Reichstag is a magnet for tourists because it brims with German history. 

The meeting place of the Imperial Diet, it was torched in 1933 in a calamity that quickened Hitler’s rise and wasn’t rebuilt until after reunification more than half a century later.
On Saturday, according to police, two Chinese tourists standing outside the building began giving Nazi salutes. 

They were briefly detained, accused of violating a German law that seeks to keep the Reichstag’s darkest chapter from repeating itself.
The salute — with the right arm straight and angled slightly up, palm down — was used as a greeting and a way of expressing devotion to Adolf Hitler under the Third Reich. 

Provisions of the German criminal code approved after World War II outlaw the salute, along with Holocaust denial and other symbols and signals associated with the Nazis.
Several other European nations also ban the gesture. Switzerland’s Supreme Court last week upheld the conviction of a man who had performed the “Heil Hitler!” salute outside a synagogue in Geneva.
Police guarding the Reichstag, which today is the seat of the lower house of the German Parliament, saw the two tourists, ages 36 and 49, taking photographs of each other giving the salute, according to a police statement.
The two men were taken to a nearby police precinct and questioned. 

They were released on bail of 500 euros, or nearly $600, each.
A criminal investigation will continue, though the tourists are being permitted to leave the country with their tour group, a police spokeswoman said Sunday. 

Conviction can carry a prison sentence of up to three years.
In 2011, a 30-year-old Canadian tourist was detained after being photographed giving the Nazi salute outside the Reichstag. 

He got off with a fine.
The burning of the Reichstag shortly after Hitler’s selection as chancellor in 1933 was used by the Nazis as an excuse to solidify their power. 

They blamed a Dutch Communist for setting the fire.
The rules wiping away relics of the Nazi past are sacrosanct in Germany — taught in schools and emphasized in households. 

But it is not clear how familiar foreign visitors are with the postwar statute, typically used to prosecute members of the far right.
European capitals are popular destinations for tourists from China, and nations such as Germany eagerly court these visitors. 

Next year has been dubbed the European Union-China Tourism Year, part of an initiative developed by the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and the Chinese prime minister, Li Keqiang.