Chinese-Australian Community Leader First To Be Charged Under New Influence Laws

UK media is report­ing that a Chi­nese-Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty leader has become the first per­son charged with a for­eign inter­fer­ence offense under news laws estab­lished in 2018. Accord­ing to The Guardian report:

Novem­ber 5, 2020 A Chi­nese-Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty fig­ure who was pic­tured with fed­er­al min­is­ter Alan Tudge donat­ing $30,000 in Covid-19 relief to a Mel­bourne hos­pi­tal in June has become the first per­son charged with a for­eign inter­fer­ence offence. Di Sanh Duong, known as Sun­ny, appeared before the Mel­bourne mag­is­trates court on Thurs­day charged with prepar­ing for a for­eign inter­fer­ence offence. Aus­tralian fed­er­al police deputy com­mis­sion­er Ian McCart­ney con­firmed it was the first time some­one had been charged with the offence since new nation­al secu­ri­ty laws were passed in 2018. No fur­ther infor­ma­tion was released about the alleged offend­ing. Duong is the pres­i­dent of the Ocea­nia Fed­er­a­tion of Chi­nese Organ­i­sa­tions from Viet­nam, Cam­bo­dia, and Laos. In June, he appeared with Tudge, the act­ing min­is­ter for immi­gra­tion and mul­ti­cul­tur­al affairs, at Roy­al Mel­bourne hos­pi­tal to donate $37,000.

Read the rest here.

Oth­er recent Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ing on Chi­nese influ­ence oper­a­tions in the Asian-Pacif­ic region has included:

• A report on the award­ing of what was described as a” mean­ing­less” aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion to a Hong King busi­ness­man tied to Chi­nese authorities.

• A report on the case of a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor accused of mak­ing errors in her report on Chi­nese influ­ence with­in the coun­try’s uni­ver­si­ty system.

• A report that Face­book had dis­man­tled a Chi­nese dis­in­for­ma­tion net­work tar­get­ing the Philip­pines pro­mot­ing politi­cians favor­able to China