An American businesswoman, who has been detained in China since March 2015, has been charged in China for espionage.
Amongst the charges, Phan Phan-Gillis, commonly known as ‘Sandy’, is accused of trying to recruit Chinese residents in the US as spies – an allegation her husband strongly denies.
From the couple’s home in Houston, Jeff Gillis spoke with the New York Times about the charges against his wife, who is accused of spying on China while visiting Guangxi in 1996.
“Sandy is absolutely innocent,” Mr. Gillis told the paper. “Chinese officials did not even check their own internal databases to see if Sandy was in the country then. She wasn’t even in China.”
Mr. Gillis also said that the allegation of her attempting to recruit people in the late 1990s to work for a “foreign spy organization” was false and condemned her future trial over allegations of events from two decades ago by saying they defied law and common sense.
Spying convictions carry maximum sentence of life in prison in China.
Now Mr. Gillis is calling upon Barack Obama to raise the issue when he visits Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Hangzhou.
According to her husband, Ms. Phan-Gillis was detained at a border crossing from Chinese mainland into Macau and held in secret detention in March 2015. She was held there for six months before being transferred to another detention center in Nanning and has not been available for comment since she was detained.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, Hong Lei, commented on the case via fax to the NYTimes back in July. “Sandy Phan-Gillis has been arrested in accordance with the law by China’s relevant departments for being suspected of engaging in criminal activities that endanger China’s national security,” he said.
“All of Sandy Phan-Gillis’ rights have been fully guaranteed, and she has been treated well,” he added.
Phan-Gillis immigrated to the United States from Vietnam almost 40 years ago. She was born to a family of Chinese descent.
You can access open letters, such as the one addressed to Obama, from the Save Sandy campaign here.
[Image via www.SaveSandy.org]
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