The U.S. Department of Justice has charged five Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agents with spying on, harassing, and smearing Chinese dissidents on behalf of the Chinese secret service. One of the men was a non-Chinese national, Matthew Ziburis, who was assigned to spy on U.S. Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu and her father, Arthur Liu.
After participating in China’s 1989 Democracy Movement, Mr. Liu fled to the United States as a political refugee. At the age of 13, his daughter, Alysa, became the youngest woman ever to win the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. She also became the second woman in U.S. history to win gold in figure skating two years in a row.
Mr. Liu said he was contacted last November by a man who claimed to be a U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) official. The man requested both Mr. Liu and Alysa’s passport numbers, which aroused Mr. Liu’s suspicions since he had not previously interacted with the Olympic Committee. For years, he had been working directly with the U.S. Figure Skating Association.
So Mr. Liu answered, “I'll deal with it tomorrow. I will provide the copy of our passports to my known contacts.” In response, the man threatened that unless Mr. Liu cooperate, Alysa may be prohibited from participating in the upcoming international competition. Mr. Liu refused to comply with the suspicious request and hung up.
As to why Mr. Liu and his daughter were being spied on, he speculated that it had to do with his participation in the 1989 pro-democracy movement.
“When my daughter was about 13 years old, she posted on Instagram about the CCP’s concentration of ethnic Uyghurs in labor camps in Xinjiang,” he said. In a separate Instagram post, Alysa said she was proud of what her father had done for his people in 1989.
Mr. Liu believes the CCP knew his daughter was likely to represent the USA during the Beijing Winter Olympics. He thought the CCP was afraid they might use this opportunity to level criticisms about China, so they were on guard to prevent this.
After the FBI warned Liu about the CCP, Mr. Liu became concerned about the safety of his daughter. He said, “I was very worried about what they might do to my daughter so I didn’t tell her about the surveillance activities for fear this would affect her performance.”
Mr. Liu’s concerns about his daughter were aggravated by the fact that, due to the pandemic, he was not permitted to attend the Winter Games. To soothe his fears, the U.S. sent staff along with Alysa to protect her. After arriving in Beijing, Alysa called her family every day. Not until she returned home to the United States did Mr. Liu inform her about the CCP’s spying activities.
To facilitate its surveillance of the Liu family, the CCP had installed a GPS tracking device on the family car.
Mr. Liu was shocked when he learned about the five-spies case. He said, “These tactics are truly astonishing. You can see that in a free society like the United States, where the rule of law prevails, the CCP is still trying to achieve its goals by unscrupulous means.”
Now that this matter has ended, Mr. Liu said he was no longer afraid of what might happen to his family. He said the USA is a free society. “I will say what I want to say or should say. I am very honest in my words and actions, and I have not done anything wrong. So, I’m not worried about what the CCP’s agents might do to me.”
U.S. prosecutors allege that Matthew Ziburis conducted surveillance of Arthur Liu’s home and posed as a member of USOPC to obtain copies of his and his daughter’s passports. After Liu refused, Zebris threatened to postpone or deny their international travel.
Ziburis was arrested on March 15 and released on $500,000 bail.
