Chinese ex-official’s wife says alleged repatriation pressure turned her life in US ‘upside-down’

Zhu Yong, right, tries to shield himself from photographers as he leaves Brooklyn Federal court, May 31 in New York

A former Chinese official and his wife had left their homeland and kept their U.S. address private. Yet eight years later, two strangers were banging on their New Jersey front door and twisting the handle, the wife testified in a U.S. court Monday.

When the men left and Liu Fang opened the door, she found an ominous note telling her husband that if he returned to China and served 10 years in prison, his wife and children would be OK.

If the lock hadn’t held, “what happens if they were able to come in?” she wondered aloud, through a court interpreter, at the criminal trial of a man who helped post the note and two co-defendants. The co-defendants are charged with playing other roles in an alleged campaign to hound ex-official Xu Jin into returning to China.

Prosecutors say the defendants and others subjected the couple, their adult daughter and various relatives to a spate of intimidating overtures at Beijing›s behest, as part of a repatriation initiative called “Operation Fox Hunt.”

“My life was turned upside-down, at 180 degrees, overnight,” Liu told a Brooklyn federal court jury.

The men are charged with acting as illegal agents for China. Their lawyers say the three thought they were helping collect a debt or do some other task for private entities, not the Chinese government.

China describes “Operation Fox Hunt” as a plan to pursue and repatriate nationals Beijing considers fugitives. Those on the wanted list also include people at political or cultural odds with China’s ruling Communist Party.

China can’t legally compel suspects to return from the U.S., since the countries have no extradition treaty. Beijing has denied issuing threats to induce people to return “voluntarily.”

Xu, once a city official in Wuhan, and his wife left China in 2010. Chinese officials then issued international alerts that he was wanted on allegations of embezzlement and bribe-taking and that she was also wanted for allegedly accepting bribes.

Liu told jurors the government went after her husband “because he is upright, and he believes in justice … and he upset those in power.” She said she was targeted simply for being his wife. MDT/AP