On behalf of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, we write to request you to conduct a full and independent into recent espionage prosecutions against Chinese Americans that were eventually dropped. We believe in the need for the government to protect national security. However, we are concerned that cases may reflect insufficient supervision, due diligence and expertise in investigating before arresting fellow citizens and tainting them and their families with the charge of disloyalty.
As you are aware, various news outlets have revealed several cases where the government had to dismiss charges against Asian Americans after finding the evidence was too weak or. For instance, the U.S. charged Xiaoxing Xi, a physics professor at Temple University, sharing confidential schematics of laboratory equipment with scientists in China but later dropped the after it became clear that the government misunderstood the science in the case 1. In another case, U.S. arrested Sherry Chen, then a hydrologist at the National Weather, and accused her of spying for China. The government’s case was weak and prosecutors dropped the a week before trial.
The Commission shares some of the questions and concerns members of Congress and national Asian and Chinese American organizations recently raised to you that these mishandled cases may show pattern of overzealously targeting and profiling Chinese American scientists.3 We acknowledge that the of Justice recently increased the level of over national security related prosecutions earlier this year, and a department-wide implicit bias will be conducted. These are positive steps to recognize and tackle the. Nevertheless, we consider a full investigation into these incidents is still necessary to understand and to the potential bias behind the policies and practices that led to these prosecutions.
2016-7-15 PR-Chinese-American-Prosecutions