For staff of the Tibetan community centre in the New York neighbourhood of Woodside, the alarm bells started ringing when a local police officer suggested that they should stop flying the Tibetan flag outside their building.
The NYPD officer – who was himself Tibetan – was a familiar face: Baimadajie Angwang had dropped by the Tibetan Community of New York and New Jersey several times in early 2019 with offers to help.
But his comment about the flag prompted some raised eyebrows, said Tashi Chomphel, at the time a board member at the centre.
“He said: ‘it’s not good for you, there are people who want to use this centre, maybe from other communities … People who want to donate to you – big businessmen,’ things like that,” Chomphel told the Guardian “He was discouraging.”
Last week, Angwang was charged with being an intelligence asset for China, working secretly with handlers based at the Chinese consulate in New York.
According to court papers, Angwang – a naturalized US citizen originally from Tibet – had worked for Beijing since 2018, as part of its efforts to influence the Tibetan independence movement.