NEW YORK - A man had his car broken into Saturday night as it sat on the street in Chinatown—sad, but pretty typical for New York. What makes this instance different, according to the owner of the burglarized 1996 Toyota Carolla, was that no ordinary thief shattered his car's rear window and rifled through his belongings—it was a communist spy.
The thief only stole documents and miscellaneous papers, leaving behind a trunk full of electronic equipment, the car stereo and anything else with street value.
Car owner Mr. Kim Eng is a practitioner of Falun Gong, the peaceful meditation group that has become the target of violent suppression at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for the past seven years.
The CCP is known to have active agents in the United States who target Falun Gong practitioners for surveillance and harassment. Just last week, on Feb. 8, a practitioner of Falun Gong was beaten in his own Atlanta residence by three men who are suspected of being employed by the CCP.
Mr. Eng reasons that the spy took the papers in hopes that they contained useful information about Falun Gong and other Falun Gong practitioners.
"They look for information so that they can threaten you," said Eng. "For instance, if they find that you have information about relatives living in China, they might use it to threaten those relatives. They use the threat of violence against family back in China to intimidate and blackmail practitioners in the United States," he explained.
Mr. Eng, who has been practicing Falun Gong for nine years, is a highly visible practitioner of the meditation group, organizing a free practice site—a place where people can come and learn the Falun Gong exercises without charge—that takes place every Thursday evening at Washington Square Park. He said that practitioners have become used to these types of occurrences, as they are routine behavior for the CCP's spies.
About the break-in he said, "They are trying to create some sort of pressure or stress or fear, but in my opinion they are wasting their time." Mr. Eng said that he is not afraid, because there is nothing that they can really hold over his head.
"They don't really have anything on me. Unlike most practitioners in New York who have relatives in China, I was born and raised in the United States. So I don't really fit into their pattern of terror."
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