After FBI agents admitted to falsely accusing Chinese scholar Anming Hu and the U.S. court of acquitting him, The University of Tennessee, where Mr. Juanming was formerly located, also made the latest response.
According to a local tennessee media report in the Knoxville News Sentinel (Knoxville News Sentinel) local time on October 15, the University of Tennessee Knoxville (UTK) decided to reinstate Juan Ming's tenure as a teacher after he was fired by the school for being wrongly accused of espionage by the U.S. government.
In September, a federal judge in the U.S. state of Tennessee acquitted Juanming of all charges he faced. Earlier in the trial, an FBI agent also admitted to falsely accusing Mr. Hu of being a so-called "Chinese spy."
Although many Chinese (Chinese) scholars have been frequently suppressed by the US government's "China Action Plan", in recent months, several other cases similar to the Hu Anming case initiated by the US side have failed, and some US university faculty and staff have also jointly sent letters to the Department of Justice criticizing the plan. China urges the US side to listen to the just voices of all circles in the United States, earnestly correct its mistakes, and stop interfering with normal exchanges and cooperation between China and the United States in the fields of science and technology and humanities.
Screenshot of the Knoxville News Sentinel report
In a letter received Oct. 14 in the Knoxville News Sentinel newspaper, University of Tennessee provost and senior vice chancellor John Zomchick said that in addition to resuming Juanming's tenure, the school would pay him his suspension (excluding his dismissal to reinstatement) and the compensation he paid for immigration lawyers.
In addition, the school will give Hu Anming a total of $200,000 in research grants over 3 years to help him re-establish his research projects. Because Juanmin Is a Canadian citizen and requires a visa to work at a U.S. university, the letter also explains the work done by the University of Tennessee to support its work visa.
At the same time, the letter also said that the University of Tennessee has been strongly criticized by faculty, staff, scholars, and Asian-American support groups around the world, who believe that the cooperation between school administrators and the FBI in the investigation is inappropriate.
Earlier, University of Houston professor Steven Pei urged the University of Tennessee to reinstate Juan Ming on October 13. He also revealed that the deadline for the U.S. government to appeal against Juanming's case has passed (October 12), while NASA has reinstated Juanming's normal application and funding eligibility for funding on October 10.
Image from Twitter
Anming Hu is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Tennessee, usa, and an expert in the field of high-temperature brazing of nanomaterials. He was arrested in February 2020 and faces up to 20 years in prison on charges of telecommunications fraud and misrepresentation, as well as being a so-called "Chinese spy."
At the time, U.S. attorney Matthew McKenzie claimed that Mr. Hu was suspected of deliberately concealing his ties to Chinese academic institutions, causing the University of Tennessee to incorrectly certify the university's application to comply with relevant federal laws when applying to NASA for federal program funding.
However, Mr. Hu said he did not deliberately withhold information and did not list that he was also employed at a Chinese university when filling out the form because he did not have a clear understanding of the requirements of the university. Subsequently, Juanming was fired from the University of Tennessee on the grounds that his work visa had expired.
The trial began on June 7 this year, local time, but the FBI's investigation into Mr. Hu was launched three years ago.
According to the Wall Street Journal, about 3 years ago, the US federal government launched the "China Initiative", which aims to prevent the transfer of trade secrets and other patent information to China, investigate and prosecute companies and individuals suspected of engaging in so-called "trade secret theft" and "economic espionage", and focus on "American researchers who receive funding from the US government and work or communicate in China". U.S. authorities say the researchers may have intentionally or unintentionally transferred cutting-edge technology to China.
Shortly after the measures were introduced, some Chinese (Chinese-American) scholars and researchers in the United States became targets, and Hu Anming was not the only one, but he was the first person to appear in court for concealing his work in China, so the case attracted much attention.
On June 13, trial information disclosed by the Knoxville News Sentinel newspaper showed that an F.B.I. agent admitted to falsely accusing Chinese professor Hu Anming of being a "Chinese spy," which led to the latter being placed on the federal no-fly list and being monitored with his son for two years.
The FBI agent, Kujtim Sadiku, acknowledged a series of actions against Juanming, including:
False accusations that Hu Anming is a "Chinese spy";
When meeting with Mr. Hu Anming, he hinted that Hu Anming was a "secret agent" of the Chinese military;
Using false information to place Hu Anming on the federal no-fly list;
Prompted U.S. customs officers to confiscate Mr. Juanming's computer and telephone, spreading news in the international research community that Mr. Juanming was a "harmful person";
Using disinformation, a team of agents spied on Juan Ming and his son, who was in his first year of college, for up to two years;
Use false information to pressure Juan Ming to become a spy for the U.S. government.
Until September 9 this year, local time, in a 52-page ruling released on the same day, Judge Thomas Varlan of the U.S. District Court for the U.S. District of Tennessee acquitted All charges Faced by Juanming. Varan said the rules involved applying for research funding were unclear and that the evidence provided by prosecutors could not prove that Professor Hu had deliberately deceived NASA.
In addition to this, several other similar cases have also failed in recent months. In July, U.S. prosecutors dropped the indictment of five visiting scholars accused of concealing ties with the Chinese military.
In fact, the US government's crackdown on Chinese (Chinese) scholars is growing, and many people have already received the impact. In January, Chen Gang, a member of the U.S. Academy of Engineering and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was indicted and arrested for failing to disclose to the U.S. Department of Energy his work in China and the rewards he received on charges similar to Hu Anming's, including fraud and misrepresentation.
Rao Yi, a prominent Chinese biologist and deputy director of the Peking University Council, issued an open letter to the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on January 15, calling the arrest an "act of racism," that Chen Gang's relationship with China is a very normal relationship with academia, and that the FBI's key allegations against Dr. Chen are absurd.
Hu Anming (data map) Picture from the US media
According to reports, in September this year, 177 Stanford University faculty members of the United States jointly sent a letter to the US Department of Justice, criticizing the "China Action Plan" launched by the Trump administration in 2018 for seriously deviating from the established goals, harming the competitiveness of US scientific research and inciting racial discrimination.
In this regard, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on September 14 that the media has exposed that the so-called "China Action Plan" first sets case handling targets and then investigates cases, so that such a disregard for judicial justice will only lead to unjust, false and wrongly decided cases. As of the end of March this year, the U.S. Department of Justice's "China Action Plan" website published a compilation of so-called "typical cases" involving intellectual property rights and commercial theft, and the charges were fraud, misrepresentation, tax concealment, and so on.
Zhao Lijian pointed out that the joint letter of faculty and staff of US colleges and universities once again proves that more and more people in the United States have realized that this so-called "China Action Plan" is essentially a tool for US anti-China forces to abuse the concept of national security and suppress China. This plan not only caused serious harm to Sino-US relations, but also exacerbated racial discrimination in the United States and caused serious damage to the Asian American community. China urges the US side to listen to the just voices of all circles in the United States, earnestly correct its mistakes, and stop interfering with normal exchanges and cooperation between China and the United States in the fields of science and technology and humanities.
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