A former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official who defected to the U.S. two years ago recently revealed in an interview the extent to which Xi Jinping’s regime monitors houses of worship in the country and persecutes religious believers, as well as its extensive system of surveilling and harassing Chinese dissidents overseas.

In what is becoming an increasingly rare occurrence, a former official of the CCP has come forward as a whistleblower against the Chinese government, highlighting the human rights abuses that the communist regime perpetrates against religious believers in the country. Ma Ruilin, who recently spoke with CNN, spent 24 years working within the CCP’s obscure United Front Work Department, where he worked to spy on mosques and churches.

As a member of China’s Hui Muslim minority, he escorted and monitored Chinese Muslims during pilgrimages to Mecca and to the U.S. “The religious database I designed hurt many people,” he lamented. “What I’m doing now is my repentance, my apology.”

Ruilin explained that the United Front “has access to all surveillance systems. At least three different types of cameras are installed at mosque entrances, inside mosques, churches, and prayer halls.” He went on to say that his department was involved in closing down multiple mosques and churches, as well as recruiting informers within houses of worship. “Every mosque has them,” he noted. “They’re paid and rewarded annually.” Ruilin further detailed how his spying work led to religious practitioners being detained, imprisoned and “re-educated” at labor camps.

But even when whistleblowers are able to escape the clutches of the CCP and defect to places like the U.S., the regime has a network of overseas “police stations” that spy on and harass them at the direction of the regime. The FBI has so far shut down one confirmed facility in New York City’s Chinatown district and is reportedly investigating others in several cities, including Los Angeles, Houston, Omaha, San Francisco, St. Paul, Salt Lake City, and Charlotte.

A senior FBI official told CNN that Beijing is creating “an Orwellian climate of fear in Chinese communities in the U.S.” He went on to say that any “vocal dissident [of China] with a large following” should expect to be monitored and possibly harassed and assaulted by agents of the CCP on American soil. Even Chinese immigrants with low profiles like Lin Hai have experienced the wrath of CCP agents. He described to CNN how he was beaten by agents at a rally he attended in Manhattan in support of the visiting president of Taiwan in 2019.

The FBI official told CNN that while an official number is unknown, there are likely “hundreds” of Chinese government agents currently operating in the U.S.

Some of these agents are attempting to do far more than merely monitor Chinese dissidents. As Gatestone Institute Senior Fellow Gordon Chang reported last week, another likely bioterror lab being run by Chinese nationals was recently uncovered on the outskirts of Las Vegas, in which SWAT and federal agents “seized over a thousand vials of an unknown substance or substances.” This followed the discovery of a building in Reedley, California in December 2022, in which numerous Chinese nationals were working in lab coats with almost 1,000 transgenic mice “genetically engineered to catch and carry the COVID-19 virus.” In addition, authorities found “medical waste and chemical, viral, and biological agents” containing “at least 20 potentially infectious pathogens, including those causing coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis, and herpes.” There was also a freezer labeled “Ebola” which contained “unlabeled sealed bags used to store high-risk biological materials.” Chang noted that “Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology are studying Ebola, which has a natural fatality rate of 50%, undoubtedly to weaponize it.”

Despite these threats, whistleblowers like Ma Ruilin are a reminder that Xi Jinping’s communist regime cannot muzzle all of the dissidents who speak out against its human rights abuses. At the end of his interview with CNN, Ruilin admitted that he will likely face harassment or worse from the CCP for coming forward against the regime but insisted that he has no regrets for speaking out. “At least I’m no longer doing bad things now.”