Sydney, Australia - Falun Gong practitioners who set up an elaborate sting to catch a man repeatedly vandalising their campaign vehicle claim the Chinese Government may have ordered the attacks.
A 58-year-old Sydney man has been charged with two counts of malicious damage after members of the dissident Chinese group caught him early yesterday morning slashing the tyres and defacing the body of the vehicle, which is emblazoned with anti-communist slogans.
Grant Lu, who owns the vehicle, said he and an associate first spotted the man in July vandalising it in Surry Hills. They kept watch and on August 8 caught him on video smashing a brick through the front window and slashing its tyres.
When the next attack came, early yesterday, Mr Lu was again watching. Police were called and the man was found and identified by the earlier video.
As well as slashing the vehicle's tyres, the man allegedly sprayed highly flammable degreaser all over the vehicle.
Mr Lu is a prominent activist for Falun Gong, a meditation group with millions of devotees that Beijing views as an "evil cult" with a political agenda.
Mr Lu's wife, Ying Li, spent two years in a labour camp in China for her beliefs and was identified by Hao Fengjun, a defector to Australia from China's security services, as someone whose activities were monitored by the Chinese Government.
Another defector, former diplomat Chen Yonglin, said the Chinese Government regularly monitored and harassed Falun Gong members when he worked at China's Sydney consulate.
China has denied the claim but Mr Lu said he strongly believed that the Chinese Government was involved in the vandalisation.
"It's one of two possibilities: someone acting independently who was brainwashed by the Communist Party, or someone who is working for the Chinese Government," he said.
"After what Chen said, I think this reason is more likely."
Mr Lu said his van had been vandalised 10 times in the past five years while his private vehicle, with nothing to link it to a Falun Gong practitioner, had been attacked twice. "It happens constantly. I am parked everywhere around the city but they find it and damage it."