MCLC: Open letter on harassment campaign against Anne-Marie Brady

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Open letter on harassment campaign against Anne-Marie Brady
Anne-Marie Brady of the University of Canterbury has had to deal with a harassment campaign since she began publishing about the CCP's political influence activities in New Zealand last year. This has included burglaries conspicuously targeting her electronic devices, sabotaging her car and MSS questioning of her academic contacts in China. The public response from the field in New Zealand has been limited.
As colleagues working on similar topics, Martin Hála and Jichang Lulu have decided to launch an open letter supporting Brady and her research. The letter will be published on the website of the Sinopsis project (Charles University / Acamedia) together with the list of signatories. If you would like to sign, please send your name and affiliation to kichou.rokuroku at gmail.com.
OPEN LETTER ON HARASSMENT CAMPAIGN AGAINST ANNE-MARIE BRADY
We, the undersigned concerned scholars and others with an interest in China, have been alarmed and appalled by the recent wave of intimidation directed against our colleague, Professor Anne-Marie Brady, in apparent retaliation for her scholarly research on contemporary China.
Anne-Marie Brady, a scholar of Chinese politics affiliated with the University of Canterbury, has investigated the external propaganda and political influence mechanisms employed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in New Zealand and beyond. Her 2017 paper Magic Weapons, based on extensive Chinese and English-language sources and previous scholarship on the PRC political system, described the CCP’s use of United Front tactics to control extra-Party forces, intensified at home and abroad under current CCP secretary general Xi Jinping. Professor Brady has accompanied her research with specific policy recommendations on how the New Zealand government can deal with the CCP’s political influence operations. These policy recommendations have attracted wide interest far beyond New Zealand.
Since the publication of her work on global United Front work, Brady’s home and office have been subjected to burglaries, during which no valuable items other than electronic devices were stolen.
Most recently, her car was found to have been tampered with in ways consistent with intentional sabotage. According to media reports, Interpol and the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (SIS) are involved in the investigation. In China, academics were interrogated by Ministry of State Security agents after their institutions hosted Brady. Brady has also been personally attacked in media under the direction of the CCP, both in the PRC and in New Zealand. Taken together, these circumstances make it likely that this harassment campaign constitutes a response to her research on the CCP’s influence, and an attempt to intimidate her into silence.
Despite the evidence of CCP interference provided in Brady’s research, of which the harassment campaign appears to be a further example, the New Zealand government has been slow to take action and failed to acknowledge that a problem exists. Professor Brady’s repeated requests for additional SIS and police protection have been ignored for four months.
Far from unique to New Zealand, the CCP’s global United Front tactics and other political influence operations have been documented in other locations, in Europe, Oceania, Asia and the Americas. Small nations can be especially vulnerable to the PRC Party-state’s exploitation of asymmetries in economic power and relevant expertise to advance its political interests. Whether within or without the limits of the law of their target countries, these activities have considerable effects on their societies and merit evidence-based research and the attention of politicians and the media. The harassment campaign against Brady risks having a chilling effect on scholarly inquiry, allowing the CCP to interfere in the politics of our societies unfettered by informed scrutiny.
We urge the New Zealand authorities to grant Professor Brady the necessary protection to allow her to continue her research, sending a clear signal to fellow researchers that independent inquiry can be protected in democratic societies and conducted without fear of retribution.
We join other voices in support of Professor Brady, which have included statements by a New Zealand Chinese community organisation, some of her Canterbury University colleagues, New Zealand academics and two Australian Sinologists, as well as many others on social media.
We further hope decision makers and the public at large, in New Zealand and elsewhere, will engage with evidence-based research on the CCP’s United Front tactics, such as Brady’s Magic Weapons, and give due consideration to policy advice emanating from such research.
Jichang Lulu, independent researcher
Martin Hála, Charles University and Sinopsis.cz
Andréa Worden, independent researcher
Magnus Fiskesjö, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University
Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania
Teng Biao, US-Asia Law Institute, New York University
Kevin Carrico, Macquarie University
Kaz Ross, School of Humanities, University of Tasmania
Wai Ling Yeung, Western Australia Department of Education
Vanessa Frangville, Université libre de Bruxelles
Thierry Kellner, Université libre de Bruxelles
Ondřej Klimeš, Czech Academy of Sciences
Maurizio Marinelli, University of Sussex
Anna Zádrapová, Sinopsis.cz
Gerrit van der Wees, George Mason University
Sean Roberts, The George Washington University
Filip Jirouš, Sinopsis.cz
Françoise Lauwaert, Université libre de Bruxelles
Charles Burton, Brock University
Kingsley Edney, University of Leeds
Posted by: Kevin Carrico <kjc83 at cornell.edu>
Lecturer, Chinese Studies
Macquarie University
by denton.2 at osu.edu on November 30, 2018
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