Death threat against Australian prime minister is latest in string of Chinese emails threatening leaders of Taiwan, Canada, Italy, Denmark, and South Korea.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s evacuation from his residence in response to a bomb threat earlier this week was not an isolated incident. Instead, he’s one of six world leaders targeted in a China-linked intimidation campaign, The Epoch Times has learned.
Since January, bomb and death threats by email have targeted Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, Italian President Sergio Mattarella, and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. Among the latest on the list is Albanese.
The emails are all similar in tone and in the graphic threats they make. All have been written in Chinese. Their message is the same: cancel scheduled shows by Shen Yun Performing Arts or face consequences.
“If you insist on proceeding with the Shen Yun performance, something will happen to the Canadian prime minister,” reads a Feb. 10 email obtained by The Epoch Times. “If you don’t care about Mark Carney and all Canadian high-ranking officials’ personal safety, then go ahead with the performance.”
“Won’t rule out shooting Lai Ching-te!” reads another from Jan. 8. “Or even crashing an explosives-loaded SUV into the Presidential Office Building. Go on if you don’t believe me.”
“If you don’t care about Mette Frederiksen and all Danish high-ranking officials’ personal safety, then go ahead with the performance,” another Feb. 10 email in Chinese reads. “I don’t care, as long as you can afford the consequences.”
An Escalating Campaign
While none of the threats turned out to be real, they represent an escalation of a decades-long campaign targeting the New York-based performing arts company.
Performing under the slogan “China Before Communism,” Shen Yun depicts traditional Chinese culture through classical Chinese dance and music. Each year, it performs for a global live audience of around 1 million. The Epoch Times is a media sponsor of Shen Yun.
The performing arts company was founded by practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual group severely persecuted in China by the Chinese Communist Party. Shen Yun, since its inception in 2006, has faced a sabotage campaign from the regime that deploys tactics such as diplomatic and economic coercion to stop its performances.
The threat emails mark a new form of sabotage. Last year, a similar threat resulted in an evacuation at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, now named the Trump Kennedy Center.
After first surfacing about two years ago, the threats now total more than 130 and counting, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center. The actors behind them began by targeting both Shen Yun’s performers and their families, as well as the company’s training facilities.
They also threatened U.S. lawmakers, the White House, and theaters and institutions globally, often describing possible bombings or mass shootings as consequences should the show go on.
Taiwanese authorities, in a multiagency investigation, linked some of the emails to central China’s Xi’an city, with a research facility for tech giant Huawei—which is blacklisted in the United States over national security concerns—as a prime suspect.
By Eva Fu
