H.B. 547 Transnational Repression Amendments: transcript

Um, first on agenda, we'll go to HB 5 47 transnational repression amendments. Um, I'll be speaking to the first substitute and Representative Gricius will take over as chair. Also got a little handout here. Great. Okay. Handout, It's a motion to, So, so I'm gonna be speaking to the first substitute of, uh, HB 5 4 7. Um, it's transnational repression amendments. And, um, this issue has actually come more onto the scene with, even within the past two weeks with some news that has come out of the Olympics. Um, transnational repression is when, uh, foreign countries utilize, um, re repression and coercion, um, on citizens of their country, or dual citizens or former citizens of their country on American soil. And they do so, um, through a number of different ways. And most recently in the, the story that's in front of you right now, most recently, Olympic athlete, Alyssa Liu, um, and her family was victim to transnational repression. In 2022, the Department of Justice indicted five people for various crimes against the family, including conspiracies to act as illegal agents of the Chinese Communist, uh, party, interstate harassment and identity theft. So, Alyssa Liu, you may have heard this story in the news, she's a, a very, uh, amazing, uh, gold medalist figure skater for the United States, but her father is actually a dissident from, um, the, the Chinese Communist Party. Um, during the 2000, in, during, in 2021, um, someone called her father and claimed to be an official with the US Olympic Committee and asked for passport numbers, asked for information, um, when, when Alyssa's father refused, this individual began to threaten them and, um, talk about, uh, that he was going to be disrupting their travel and that she would not be able to participate in the Olympics. Um, all of this happened despite assurances from the State Department and the Olympic Committee that Alyssa would be protected in China. Um, and so this is becoming more and more of an issue. This is a bipartisan issue. I'm, I passed around a tweet from the oversight, uh, Democrats, uh, once again, congratulating Alyssa and her family for standing up to the Chinese government. Um, and more than anything, this is about making sure that, uh, uh, sit when people are on American soil, that they're not gonna be subject to, uh, repression from foreign governments. The first substitute takes out a little bit of the training requirements for law enforcement. The reason for this was it, uh, generated a significant fiscal note. And so what we hope is that if we can pass this legislation, um, then we can, uh, run a request for appropriation next year to get that program funded. But this is, uh, make sure that the Utah Board of Higher Education provides information on transnational repressions to international students. So, once again, this is another opportunity for vulnerability. And then it creates a criminal penalty enhancement if a crime is committed by an individual at the direction of a foreign government, or an agent of a foreign terrorist organization, uh, to cause a victim to, um, essentially coercing, uh, that victim. So I have two witnesses, um, online, um, Jonathan, if, if you'd be able to, we have a retired ambassador, Kelly Curry and, uh, miss, uh, h uh, Anna from, uh, who is an activist, uh, with, with in Hong Kong. If we could have, if we could have them speak briefly.

Um, sure. Uh, good morning everyone, and thank you Representative Clancy for introducing us. So, I'm Anna Kock, a Hong Kong activist based in Washington DC and the former executive director of an advocacy group called the Hong Kong Democracy Council. In less than 48 hours, my 69-year-old father will be sentenced to prison in Hong Kong. And why is that? So, uh, that is because of my advocacy work here in the United States. I have been advocating for policies that combat Hong Kong foreign influence and transnational repression on the Hill. And the Hong Kong government decides to retaliate against me by taking hostage of my family. And that is precisely transnational repression. And this is the first time they're coming after families in Hong Kong. But of course, we know this has been a longstanding trick of the Chinese Communist Party, and this will hardly be the last time the campaign to repress me. Transnationally started three years ago. So in 2023, after testifying in the US Congress and campaigning for sanctions implementation, the Hong Kong government issued a 1 million Hong Kong dollar bounty on my head. So that is equivalent to about 120,000 USD. So this triggered, you know, a series of death threats and kidnapping threats being sent to me. So in the same year when Xi Jinping visited San Francisco for the APAC conference, United friend groups that were pro CCP and figures were mobilized to organize so-called like welcome rallies, uh, with more than a thousand people. And tha with Metropol showed up, uh, to assault our group of protesters on scene. And as our community was very aware of transnational repression and the kidnapping threats that were made, to me, protesters really tried to surround me to ensure that there would always be a human shield. Uh, so I was never alone and I would never be kid kidnapped. But unfortunately, in the process, there were multiple US citizens that were assaulted in the end. So we documented about 34 cases of assault, intimidation, and harassment on the streets of San Francisco. And at the time, we tried to ask the police on scene for help, for people around us for help. Um, but they denied it because they thought they outright told us something like that doesn't exist on America, on American soil. And that is plainly wrong. That is part of the problem. Uh, a lot of the time there were people who would be able to help, uh, first responders, police people on scene, uh, and they were often the people who have the power to intervene right away. Um, but when trainings are not available, when the knowledge is not there, um, the first responders cannot recognize the issue and they cannot really intervene. And in the end, there were assaults, there were intimidation happening, and that is why in tackling transnational repression training and recognition are necessary to offer supports to targets. So I want to close by saying that transnational repression is happening right now, right here, and it can come in many shapes and forms. It can come as direct assault, taking care of family hostage, financial coercion, verbal intimidation, and sadly, many, many more unimaginable, horrid ways. And we're seeing a sense of urgency in ways we have never seen before. So I wish the Utah House Judiciary Committee considered this initiative to combat T anon.

Thank you. And good morning. Um, as, as you noted, my name is Kelly Curry, and I am a former US Ambassador to the United Nations, where I worked on human rights issues. Um, and one of the things that we were working on while I was at the United Nations, and then when I went back to the State Department, is this issue of transnational re oppression. Um, and, and, um, Representative Clancy is right. It is having a moment right now because of the case of Alyssa Liu, whose father Arthur, um, was a, is a Chinese dissident, was a Chinese dissident in is one. And the case that he cited the harassment that he cited started, um, back during the 2022 Beijing Olympics where Alyssa was competing. And she, um, her father protected her from the fear that he had, that something terrible was going to happen to her after they tried to bribe her and turn her into the Eileen Goo of figure skating. And that didn't work. Um, then they turned to threats and coercion. And this is as Anna, um, as my colleague, Ms. Qua, um, indicated. And, and Anna's case, the case with her father is one of the more extreme versions. But it is, um, by far not unusual when you have outspoken dissidents here in the United States. Um, there are a number of cases of ERs who are human rights advocates, who have seen their family members take in hostage. You have, um, individuals, the, some of the most frightening cases take place here on US soil and end up as, as she indicated, the situation in San Francisco, um, with violence. But the more common, and in a way more corrosive is the, the cases that take place on campus every day at universities across the United States, where organizations like the Chinese Students and Scholars Association exert subtle but real pressure on Chinese students who are coming here to study in the United States. Um, and then they all, and across even the Chinese American community that is studying at these universities to pressure them to not speak out against the, the human rights violations that are happening in the People's Republic of China to not take position public positions, um, criticizing the PRC or Xi Jinping. And so this is, this is a real issue. I have testified on this issue across the United States, and this is one of the most common questions I get, is, is this real? Like, why, why would we need to do this? And then the second most common question is, why isn't the FBI taking care of this? And the answer to that is that the FBI is not the first line of defense in, in law enforcement in the United States. Local law enforcement and state law enforcement are, are that first line of defense, and they are the ones who are most likely to encounter the victims and the targeted communities of transnational oppression. And then another question, I'm just gonna go ahead and try to preempt all your questions, is, um, well, what isn't this targeting does, isn't this most like, more likely to like, make, um, Chinese people in the United States put them under a cloud of suspicion? Actually, it's the opposite. Chinese people living in the United States and Chinese Americans in the United States, and members of ethnic communities like the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, the Mongolians who, um, who are under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party, they are the most likely communities to be targeted by this kind of, um, repression. And this is about protecting them, allowing them to live here in the United States without fear of being targeted by a foreign adversary of the United States. And so this is, um, and, and the other point that I'd like to make, because the, it's a final thing that comes up is about the, the constitutionality. And is this going to abridge people's free speech? It absolutely does not. Again, this is, um, this is a penalty enhancement. You have to commit a crime in order for this law to be triggered. And so unless you're planning to commit a crime on behalf of a foreign entity, there's no chilling effect on your free speech. So those are the main points that I wanted to make. I'm a human rights lawyer by training, and I've been doing this work for about 30 years now. And the, the, the rise of this behavior inside the United States in the past five, six years has been extremely alarming. The, the PRC and other actors, the Iranians, my friend Masa, Alina Jad, has been targeted for assassination in the United States, feel extremely empowered to engage in this behavior. And it's really important for states like Utah to pass this legislation. We've already seen three states, Tennessee, I'm sorry, Texas, Nebraska and Arizona pass this legislation last year, and it's pending in five other states right now. And we, the, it's important for the states to do this, and then also, you know, it helps, uh, as you know, our states are great laboratories of democracy and they do things and then the federal government, um, gets in gear behind them. So thank you for doing this. Thank you for your leadership Representative Clancy. And please, if you have any questions, I'm here for it. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Curry. Madam Chair, that concludes our presentation.

Yeah, I was just, I, I was intrigued by, uh, the comment about Eileen Gu, is that what happened to her? She was she harassed to become a Chinese national or was, 'cause she was born in America, right? Ambassador Curry. Do you wanna answer that?

Yes. Eileen Gu was not harassed. She was, I, I think, wide open to the inducements that the Chinese Communist party through. I don't think that there was any pressure at all, other than the desire to become a celebrity and, um, and not having any real sense of what it means to be an American. Sorry, that's a little bit of an editorial comment.

Thank you. Um, I like this and I, I definitely see the need for this, but I wonder does this apply, would this apply to all people who live in Utah or, um, only if they've become US citizens?

Th thank you for the question, Representative Acton. So the, in order to trigger this enhancement, um, if you, if the perpetrator committed the crime of transnational re oppression in Utah, the victim's status of citizenship wouldn't matter. It would be about the perpetrator and where, where the crime was committed from. Okay.

Uh, HB 5 47. And we need to adopt first Substitute. Okay. I move that we adopt first substitute HB 5 47.

We'll go back to the sponsor of the motion. I'll waive.

Yeah, I, I move. We favorably recommend, uh, first substitute HP 5 47.

I appreciate the motion and I think particularly as we prepare for the Winter Olympics coming Utah, we're gonna ha continue obviously to have, uh, international students and be a welcoming culture. But also we're gonna be welcoming thousands of athletes from across the world. We wanna make sure that people recognize that, uh, America and more So Utah is a place for free expression is a place for, um, uh, freedom. And I think this, this sets a clear line in the sand that we would not tolerate harassment and repression of individuals, um, wherever you are in the world when you're here in Utah, that we're not gonna tolerate that. So I appreciate the motion.

Can I make one final motion? That is an order. Can we put this on consent To the motions to put it on consent to the sponsor, the bill? Uh, I think that'd be a great motion.

I, I can share I haven't had any opposition via text, email, or hearing anything publicly. I think it's, uh, I passed around, uh, also a tweet from the national, uh, uh, uh, congressional Democrats supporting, uh, Alyssa Liu and her, uh, overcoming Yeah. Uh, the oppression. So, uh, if, if the committee feels that appropriate, I think that it would be great. I have, I definitely haven't heard any concerns.

Um, house Bill 5 47, uh, many of you probably have been watching the Winter Olympics and saw one of the United States, uh, best figure skaters probably in history, gold medalist Elisa Liu. But what you might not know about Ms. Liu and her family is that she's actually been the target of transnational repression, uh, for the past several years as she's been on her athletic journey. So, uh, Ms. Liu, uh, in 2022, uh, her, her, because her father is a Chinese dissident and because of the, her target on her back, uh, for transnational repression, um, individuals have attempted to coerce her and her family out of their passports. Um, they've had spies sent to their home, they've had, uh, surveillance, uh, been, uh, to be done on them as well. And, um, made, made her life a living hell. So HB 5 47, uh, particularly I think believe it's important as we are preparing to host a two, 2034 Olympic games. And we will have international athletes from a number of different countries and a number of, uh, those countries have, uh, different, uh, policies on, on freedom of expression and, and different things for their athletes. And so, what HB 5 47 does is pretty simple. Essentially, if an actor is, is a committing a crime against an individual on behalf of a foreign country. Um, and once again using the, uh, the description of, um, Ms. Elisa Liu and I emailed you all the story, uh, in Forbes that just came out when Ms. Lou spoke about it enhances the, that penalty if you're acting on behalf of a foreign actor in order to repress, uh, either an American citizen, uh, an international citizen or a dual citizen. So the, it's not about citizenship, it's just about where the victim is. So this would be in Utah. Once again, I think it's particularly important as we look at, um, the 2034 Olympics coming. And if it's okay, Mr. Chair have Ambassador Curry online that I would like to, to sum for, for just a moment here, if that's appropriate.

Yes. There we go. I do, I can. Thank you. Sorry, I was having some technical difficulties there. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Kelly Curry and I am here today representing State Armor, which is an organization that works with the states to help build resilience to, um, threats from our foreign adversaries. And we work with legislators like Representative Clancy and others to help them identify Solu state solutions.

Yes, thank you, sir. So I, um, as Representative Clancy mentioned, I'm here in support of HB 5 47. I'm a human rights lawyer by training. And the case that of Alyssa L'S family is sadly not unusual. It, um, in the United States today. And what happened to the people who were harassing her family is also not unusual. They are currently awaiting trial in federal court since 2022. Their case has basically been subject to one continuance after another. And they are, um, and, and it's just been four years of justice denied. And as we all know from the old saying, justice denied is justice deferred because states, um, are the frontline for law enforcement when crimes like this happen. They are the the first people that get, that should get called and they should be able to protect the student, the, the, um, citizens of their states and have the ability to apply penalty enhancements when crimes such as stalking, harassment, assault are perpetrated in the name of transnational re oppression. The statute defines transnational re oppression. It identifies the foreign adversaries that can commit, that commit transnational re oppression. And it provides the state, and especially law enforcement with additional tools to protect both the physical safety and the constitutional rights of individuals in Utah. Um, as the, um, con, as the member said, it does not matter what their citizenship status is, as long as they're present in Utah and the crime occurs in Utah, then the statute is triggered. And the other thing that I think is important to understand is that there does have to be an actual crime committed. This is not, um, this does not get at just issues about speech or, um, there or present any kind of constitutional question around a chilling effect on speech. Because in order to trigger the statute, there must be a crime. The other thing that is an element of the, that allows for the penalty enhancement is that there must be an act on behalf of the foreign adversary on behalf of a foreign terrorist organization. So you have to be acting as an agent of someone else when you commit this crime in order. And the police have to, obviously, and the, the courts have to be able to prove that. So that's, um, we think that this is a very important piece of legislation states, um, such as Texas and Nebraska, uh, and Arizona have passed similar legislation. The federal government has struggled to pass legislation like this. The FBI doesn't have the bandwidth to handle all these cases. And as you, as I noted before, you see what happens when they end up in federal court. And so we, um, working with states and state legislatures to help build this kind of protection at the state and local level is really important. I would also note that one

Okay. Is that it highlights the role that, um, in educational institutions and encourages and makes it necessary for the state university system to, um, help students who might be targeted on campus because that is another major vector of the transnational repression threat. So thank you. I'm happy to take any questions. Thank

Yeah, so my question's gonna be for the sponsor, um, um, overlap federal law. I mean, how is local law enforcement even investigated as to whether or not somebody's a foreign adversary? And don't we already have federal laws that cover this? And and we are also Yeah, go ahead. You're,

You're, you're spot on. And that's the original iteration of the bill had the training component for law enforcement. Um, we shifted that to the education, uh, to the u uh, to, to make sure that they're training particularly, uh, higher education where there's international students coming in and about this type of behavior. This is making sure that the state of Utah can enforce those laws. And so if we have schools in southern Utah, Northern Utah, central Utah, that our law enforcement can, uh, investigate these cases, be competent in those cases, and, uh, make sure that we're not waiting for the federal government to, to, to jump in before we allow, um, these individuals to, to repress, uh, folks in Utah.

Okay. Second question. You, you've made it applicable to even some lower level stuff, harassment, things like that. I mean, I, I think this something like this probably should be more reserved for higher level crimes, but just quickly explain that and that I'll be done.

Yes. Yes, Senator. The, the reason we, uh, it's broad is that's actually one of the tactics. It's a, it's an intimidation tactic. So we actually had Ms. Anna quo from, um, she's currently living in California, testified at our last committee. Um, her father was arrested in Hong Kong over the weekend after she testified. And he's been sentenced to four years in prison for her advocacy in the United States. And so that's where I say the, the, the damage that can be inflicted, you know, even if it's harassment, it's so significant when you're looking at that transnational piece. That's why we felt that that was, uh, appropriate. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Okay. I would, um, I would recommend favorably HB 5 47 for substitute.

No, I appreciate the consideration.

a couple years ago I ran a bill condemning the Chinese treatment of the GER population. Uh, this type of threat of harassment and threats that happens, that happens here in Utah. I had, uh, op operatives of the Chinese government located in Utah, contacting me, harassing me. I was contacted by our senator, which unfortunately the ambassador doesn't have a Senator Con to contact her 'cause she's in dc. But, um, but our senator contacted me and said, you need to protect all of your private passwords, all of your digital id, everything, because I was guaranteed to be hacked, uh, by the Chinese government because they did not want me to run a bill. And then I had the State Department contacting me. Um, I had to report that I'd been threatened. I'm probably unable to go to China at any point in my life from this point on. Um, I plan to run the bill again, uh, just to spite them. And so, um, in any event, uh, uh, I, this is a real problem and so I appreciate you bringing it. I think you and Senator Curtis should just go over just to see what happens.

Thank you Mr. Speaker Pro TE colleagues You may know the the Great United States figure skater Elisa Liu, who just won a gold medal for the United States. What you might not know about Mrs. Li and her family is that her father is actually a dissident from the Chinese Communist Party. Over the years in her, uh, international competition and here in the United States, she and her family have consistently been harassed by agents of the Chinese Communist Party and intelligence officers seeking to thwart, uh, her success, seeking to, uh, cause harm to her family and house. Bill 5 47 closes that gap. This is what, what you, what I just described is called transnational repression. So when an agent of a foreign government is operating here in the state of Utah on behalf of a foreign government, in order to repress either American citizens, dual citizens, or residents of Utah, we need to make sure that we take a firm stand. HB 5 47. Uh, make sure that we have a enhancement for those crimes that are committed against individuals on Utah soil on behalf of foreign governments. Uh, thank you Mr. Speaker Proton.

Thank you Mr. President. So this is a bill that we've been working on. Um, we've had issues with transnational repression in the past. It's been a significant issue in the state of Utah. If you look at the language of the bill, this deals with transnational repression. Either our higher ed institutions, we want to tackle it there and we wanna make sure that as a student comes from out of state, that they that out, out of our country, that they see, they see that issue. That's part of the language. And we, we've had this issue in the past. You'll see that one of our Olympic fig figure skaters, um, Eliza Lou, who, um, was, did incredible in the Olympics. She was actually targeted and a victim. So that's what the bill does. It's, it's there to help support those, especially in the higher ed world. But that's what the bill does. And I'm open for questions.

Thank you. I move that this bill pass.

Senator Vickers. Baldy Aye. Lewin Brammer Bus Comore Escamilla Fillmore Grover Harper Hankins Ipson Johnson. Juab McKay Aye. Mikel Aye. Milner Musselman Musselman Owens pitcher Plum Rebe Sandal Stevenson Stratton Vickers Weiler. Will you Run that over? Wilson Winterton Fillmore. President Adams Aye.