July 10, 2005

DEFECTING Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin has made public three documents, which he says show the Australian Chinese community is being spied on.

Mr Chen was granted a permanent protection visa last week after abandoning his post at the Chinese Consulate-General six weeks ago in Sydney.

At the time he said there was a network of 1000 Chinese spies operating in Australia and he feared for his life if he was forced to return to China.

In Sydney today, Mr Chen released three Consulate-General documents with information allegedly provided by informants.

One document tracks the movements of a female Falun Gong practitioner in Australia while another provides an organisational breakdown of the local Falun Gong [...] movement.

The third document is written on a Chinese Embassy letterhead and says the names of 300 Falun Gong practitioners would be forwarded to the consulate.

Mr Chen says the names provided by informants would be put on a blacklist in the consulate.

"In the Chinese community there are a lot of informants, of course," Mr Chen told reporters.

"Today I don't want to publicise all these names (of informants), I just want to warn these people to stop doing that.

"I want to tell these informants from the bottom of my heart I look down upon them."

Mr Chen said while he had been granted a visa, he felt he still had to be cautious because he said there was a possibility he could be kidnapped.