BOSTON (Reuters) - A Chinese music student went on trial on Monday on U.S. charges that he harassed an activist who posted fliers at the Berklee College of Music in Boston supporting democracy in China and threatened to report her activities to Chinese law enforcement.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alathea Porter told a federal jury in Boston that Xiaolei Wu, 25, scared the activist, referred to only as Zooey in court, by making threats online to chop off her hands and report her to the Chinese government because of her “reactionary posters.”

“She was afraid for herself, and she was afraid for her family, who was back in China,” Porter said in her opening statement to a 12-person jury.

The trial comes as U.S. and Western authorities continue to warn that China’s government has increasingly exerted pressure to silence its critics abroad.

  • MamboGator@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    And he’ll never realize the irony of how lucky he is that he’s going through the Western justice system instead of China’s.

    • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      yeah ours is bad as fuck but…parts of you get sold over there. Didn’t most of that bodies exhibit turn out to be Chinese prisoners?

      • SuperApples@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There’s enough provable atrocities being committed by the Chinese govt to worry about the conspiracy theories as well. Especially when a lot of the body and organ harvest theories are spread by a California mansion dwelling homophobic cult leader who can totally levitate he just doesn’t have to prove it to you!

      • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Parts of people have always been sold for research and it’s no different than any other reagent. Some people even turned this into a successful business by the turn of the 50s by selling and patenting their tissues with remarkable abilities like immunity to polio. This wouldn’t surprise anyone in the medical sciences.

  • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Inb4 the token “Westerners are so brainwashed with propaganda” guy who shows up in every other thread about China or Russia

  • stoly@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “He came here to learn guitar, not to shill for the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.

    Actually I think he came to do both.