top of page

#261 07/01 Monthly Meeting; Media Reports on Forum with FBI; Another NYPD Officer Fired; +

In This Issue #261

• 2024/07/01 APA Justice Monthly Meeting

• SCMP: FBI Official Admits Mistakes, Vows to Improve Relations with Asian American Communities

• AsAmNews: FBI, Asian American Civic Groups Hold Forum on Building Trust Post-China Initiative

• Another NYPD Officer Fired Without Evidence of Guilt

• News and Activities for the Communities


2024/07/01 APA Justice Monthly Meeting


The next APA Justice monthly meeting will be held via Zoom on Monday, July 1, 2024, starting at 1:55 pm ET.


In addition to updates by Nisha Ramachandran, Executive Director, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC); Joanna YangQing Derman, Director, Advancing Justice | AAJC; and Gisela Perez Kusakawa, Executive Director, Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF), confirmed speakers are:

• Neal Lane, Senior Fellow, Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University; Former Director of Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), The White House; Former Director, National Science Foundation

• Kei Koizumi, Principal Deputy Director for Science, Society, and Policy, OSTP, The White House

• Xiaoxing Xi, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Physics, Temple University, with invited comments by Kai Li, Paul M. Wythes and Marcia R. Wythes Professor in Computer Science, Princeton University; Vice Chair, Asian American Scholar Forum, and Gang Chen, Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Karla Hagan, Senior Program Officer, Staff Director for National Science, Technology, and Security Roundtable, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM)

The virtual monthly meeting is by invitation only. It is closed to the press. If you wish to join, either one time or for future meetings, please contact one of the co-organizers of APA Justice - Steven Pei 白先慎, Vincent Wang 王文奎, and Jeremy Wu 胡善庆 - or send a message to contact@apajustice.org.


National Academies Roundtable Capstone Workshop

The National Science, Technology, and Security Roundtable Capstone Workshop on July 16-17, 2024, will present information the Roundtable has gathered since its inception in 2020 through 13 gatherings in Washington, DC and across the U.S. Dr. Karla Hagan will provide additional details about the workshop during the APA Justice monthly meeting on July 1, 2024.


SCMP: FBI Official Admits Mistakes, Vows to Improve Relations with Asian American Communities



According to the South China Morning Post on June 11, 2024, in an unusual public admission, a senior FBI official told an audience of Asian Americans that some of the bureau’s past actions have had a “negative impact” on the community but that “certainly was not the intent”.


Jill Murphy, deputy assistant director of counter-intelligence at the FBI, took part in an open dialogue between agents of the top US law enforcement agency and the academic and Asian American communities when she spoke at Rice University in Houston on June 6. The event, sponsored by Rice’s Baker Institute and Office of Innovation, Texas Multicultural Advocacy Coalition, and Asian Pacific American Justice, marked a milestone as it brought together FBI officials, field agents, community leaders, activists and scientists for the first time in person and on a livestream.


Amid criticism of the FBI’s role in the now-disbanded China Initiative and its lingering repercussions for individuals of Chinese ethnicity or with ties to China, the FBI is attempting an outreach effort with a clear message: we acknowledge past missteps and seek the community’s assistance in countering the Chinese Communist Party and its government.


“We really need to spend time listening to you and your concerns, and we’re not always right, and we can always be better. We need open lines of communication,” said Murphy, who moved to Chinese counter-intelligence in 2010 and later served on the National Security Council.


“I’m very cognizant of ensuring that we are opening our investigations on predicated facts or allegations of either things that threaten national security or federal criminal violations,” Murphy said.

“It is very unusual that the FBI leadership is willing to attend a Zoom panel discussion that the whole country can watch anonymously,” said APA Justice, adding that the event was “a big step forward.”


Gordon Quan, a former city council member in Houston and one of the community leader speakers at the event, said he hoped that Murphy’s “message comes through to the field staff.” “We believe in national security as well. But by the same token, don’t paint all Chinese with the same brush that you know China is a threat. And if you’re Chinese, you’re a possible threat,” Quan said.


Neal Lane of the Baker Institute said in an email that there was “no quick fix” to the damage done by the China Initiative, which he said had hurt the careers of scientists and hurt families. “It will take an iterative process and dialogues like this recent one to make progress. Such events should be held all across the country,” said Lane, who participated in the June 6 event.


Kelly Choi, a supervisory special agent at the FBI’s Houston field office, urged Asian Americans to collaborate with law enforcement agencies, whether reporting crimes to the FBI or local and state authorities. She recalled how after the US closed the Houston consulate within 72 hours in July 2020, some Asian Americans were not comfortable talking to the agents conducting routine interviews.


Douglas Williams, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Houston field office, said the FBI wanted Asian Americans to trust the FBI “when something does happen in this community … that you feel comfortable calling us and that we can investigate it”.

Read the South China Morning Post report: https://bit.ly/4cxC7Zx. Watch a video of the June 6 forum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csqLJo869ZY (1:55:23)


left to right: Jill Murphy, Steven Pei, Neal Lane

AsAmNews: FBI, Asian American Civic Groups Hold Forum on Building Trust Post-China Initiative



On June 13, 2024, AsAmNews reported on a rare two-hour forum with the FBI in hopes of rebuilding trust from alleged discriminatory policies against Asian Americans.


“We hope this forum will serve as a first step toward building a regular channel of communications between both of these groups,” said Sergio Lira, Vice President of Texas Multicultural Advocacy Coalition and a co-host of the forum. “And we hope the panel will provide clarity on the changing landscape of national research security policy, and its implementation.”


Kelly Choi, Supervisory Special Agent for FBI Houston’s Field office, said bridging the gap between the Asian American community and the FBI is a major priority of the agency.


“I know that some of the actions that have happened in the past have had a negative impact on this community. And that certainly was not the intent,” said Jill Murphy, the FBI’s Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence. “The intent… was purely to stop the transfer of technology that’s incentivized by the government of China, and not to dampen the scientific work and the collaboration that makes the world a better place.”


Advocates from the Asian American community and civic groups said they appreciated the agency’s openness to dialogue and feedback. Many stressed that Asian American scholars are still discriminated against even after the formal end of the China Initiative.

“The China Initiative devastated the lives of numerous Asian American scholars engaging in everyday academic research and led to a measurable chilling effect on the community,” said Gisella Kusakawa, Executive Director of Asian American Scholar Forum. “We need protection and training to address racial bias, both implicit and explicit, as well as more scientific experts and thought leaders being included in the discussion with FBI, CBP and law enforcement,” she said. “And the last thing is, we need to keep in mind that we cannot have Asian American scholars be collateral damage while we take the time to try to get this right."


David Donatti, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU, observes interrogations and deportations reflect how rights are at their “lowest point” on the border. He adds that the lack of clarity on policy from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), who controls the border, and how the FBI works with that agency can still create discriminatory situations today. “[Transparency is] not only sitting down at a table and having a dialogue, although it’s very important,” Donatti says. “It’s also having meaningful policies in place that are rigorous and clear, and easy to understand. And these policies should be subject to scrutiny.”


FBI agents agreed that opening dialogue was essential for them to better protect the Asian American community. And ultimately, maintaining open lines of communication is critical to helping that process, said Murphy. “This partnership, this relationship is really important to the FBI. We need to strive to continue to learn and listen more,” she said. “To protect this community, we really need to spend time listening to you and your concerns. And we’re not always right. And we can always be better. We need open lines of communication.”


Read the AsAmNews report: https://bit.ly/4b3jFGE


Another NYPD Officer Fired Without Evidence of Guilt



On May 21, 2024, Documented reported a veteran Chinese American police officer of 20 years was fired by the New York Police Department (NYPD) following an FBI spying investigation on February 16.


According to the report, investigations by the FBI and the NYPD found that between the end of 2019 to the fall of 2021, Steven Li had helped a Chinese national named Sun Hoi Ying to connect with a person targeted by the Chinese government. Sun was alleged to have been paid by the Chinese government to come to the U.S. to conduct “Operation Fox Hunt,” a program pursued by China’s Ministry of Public Security to repatriate alleged Chinese fugitives, often by bypassing authorities in foreign countries where these people had settled.


After he was introduced to Sun by an acquaintance, Li brokered meetings for Sun in New York with a person unnamed in the documents, who was accused of having embezzled money from a Chinese state-owned company before moving to the U.S. in 2001. NYPD’s internal investigation found Li was not guilty of the “foreign agent” related charges. There was no evidence to show that Li was aware that Sun was working for the Chinese government when the meetings took place, nor did it find that he took money from China or threatened the victim.


Li was terminated less than a month after Angwang, an ethnic Tibetan NYPD police officer from China who was charged by the federal government under the China Initiative for working for China’s interests. Despite prosecutors dropping all charges against him, the NYPD continued its internal investigation against Angwang. He was fired for failing to show up at an internal interview, which his lawyers had told him was “unlawful” because the NYPD refused to share evidence with them in advance.

At least 36 people have been charged for foreign-agent related violations benefiting China since 2020, topping any other country, while the number was five between 2009 to 2020, based on the DOJ’s announcements, an incomplete archive of federal court cases.


This means for Chinese American cops, who often participate in community events, the risk of inadvertently stepping into a plot involving China and being accused of acting as a foreign agent is higher than ever. Michael Moy, a former NYPD detective, recommends Chinese American cops to not talk to anyone they don’t know at community banquets, and to not offer advice to any party of a dispute until the case is formally reported to the police.


Read the full Documented article: https://bit.ly/44VTG2A.


Juan Zhang, editor at US-China Perception Monitor, contributed to this report.


News and Activities for the Communities

1. APA Justice Community Calendar



Upcoming Events:


2024/06/20 U.S.-China Relations: Untangling Campaign Rhetoric & Understanding Policy – Teachers Workshop

2024/06/21 Trends in Research Funding and Award Recognitions for Asian Scholars in the United States

2024/06/20-22 Social Equity Leadership Conference

2024/06/27-30 UCA: 2024 Chinese American Convention


Visit https://bit.ly/45KGyga for event details.

2. National Academies Roundtable Capstone Workshop



WHAT: National Science, Technology, and Security Roundtable - Capstone Workshop

WHEN:

• Day 1: July 16, 2024, 9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. ET

• Day 2: July 17, 2024, 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. ET

WHERE: Hybrid in-person and virtual event

• In-person: National Academy of Sciences Building, 2101 Constitution Ave NW, Washington D.C. 20418

• Virtual: coming soon

HOST: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

DESCRIPTION: The National Science, Technology, and Security Roundtable Capstone Event will provide an opportunity to present information the Roundtable has gathered since its inception in 2020 through 13 gatherings in Washington, DC and across the U.S. For more information, visit https://bit.ly/3z0PnY7

REGISTRATION: https://bit.ly/3VirGle


3. C100/TAAF Anti-Asian Hate Tracker for New York City Launched



On May 14, 2024, Committee of 100 (C100) and The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) jointly launched a database to report and track incidents of hate and bias against the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) New York City (NYC) community. The AAPI Hate Tracker is a collaborative project created by C100 and TAAF and supported by several NYC AAPI nonprofit partners, as part of the NYC Anti-Hate Collaborative. The database is funded by TAAF and C100, along with federal funding from a grant award from the U.S. Department of Justice.


4. Vincent Chin Legacy Guide



On June 19, 1982, Vincent Chin was attacked in Highland Park, Michigan, by two white men who worked in the auto industry and were angry over what they perceived as the loss of American jobs to Japanese imports. He died four days later on June 23, 1982, at the age of 27. The killing was an egregious anti-Asian hate crime of the modern era. It galvanized Asian Americans across the entire country to fight for civil rights in a battle that continues today. Activist and author Helen Zia founded the Vincent Chin Institute two years ago and produced the Vincent Chin Legacy Guide as a reference and teaching tool in English and other languages. The Vincent Chin Legacy Guide is located here: https://bit.ly/3z88akk

June 17, 2024

  • Facebook
  • X
  • YouTube
bottom of page