Philadelphia – I am a physics professor at Temple University. Today, I am compelled to leave the classrooms and laboratories to join you here, at the spot where our nation was born, to condemn the outrageous remarks that labeled every Chinese student national security risk and painted all professors, scientists, and students from China as spy suspects.
Just as you are, I was shocked to hear a top law enforcement official of the country put an entire group of the population under the suspicion of spying. I know from my own personal experience what this could mean.
This could mean that the FBI is reading all your emails and listening to all your phone calls, trying to “pick bones out of an egg,” 鸡蛋里面挑骨头. This could mean that someday, you will get the knocks at your door by FBI agents and be snatched away.
That was what happened to me. Almost three years ago, FBI agents knocked on my door in an early morning raid and took me away in handcuffs. The frightening scene played out right in front of my wife and daughters, who were rounded up at gun point by the armed agents. Based on emails I had sent from my Temple University address, the federal government charged me for passing sensitive U.S. company technology to China.
None of the charges was true. I had never shared the U.S. company technology with anyone in China. The emails I had sent were about entirely different things. They were based on my own widely-published research. When it became clear that the government had falsely charged me, it dropped the case. But, our life had been wrecked, professionally, emotionally, physically, and financially.
Why am I telling my story? Because I want to tell every professor, scientist, and student from China that it can happen to you. You may be thinking that you came to this country just to seek a good education. My wife and I, too, came to the U.S. about thirty years ago for better career opportunities and a better life. You may think you have integrated into the American society and call America your home. When we realized that our family was here and our careers were here, we decided to become American citizens. You may tell yourself, “I don’t work on sensitive technologies.” To charge me, the federal government turned a commonly-known device into a fictitious sensitive technology. You may say that you abide by the laws and do not violate any rules. What did I do wrong? I was just doing what the government and the university asked us to do. No matter. Now, we know that our whole lot is assumed guilty before proven innocent by some in our own government. It is only a matter of time and chances that you, too, may get a call from the FBI.
This is not right. Calling all professors, scientists, and students from China suspected spies is an affront to America’s ideals. Two hundred forty one years ago, our founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence in the building behind me, proclaiming that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Persecution and prosecution of any groups based on race, ethnicity or national origin encroach on the very rights we cherish so much in America.
So, I join you today to demand that we be treated equally as any other ethnic groups in this country, no more and no less. Only when we make our voices heard loud and clear can we hope to prevent the nightmare my family and I had lived through from happening to other innocent people ever again.