Police are investigating a string of fake bomb threats and hotel bookings from China. Chinese PhD student Alice from Groningen was also wrongly made a suspect by such reports.
The police in The Hague have confirmed the investigation into false bomb threats and hotel bookings from China against investigative journalists pointer of the KRO/NCRV.
According to a police spokesman from The Hague, this concerns several bomb threats that have been made from China in Europe in the past year. Various hotels, such as the Marriott in Rotterdam, were the target of those reports. The reports were ‘most likely from an IP address in China and Hong Kong’.
Scared when the Hague police call you about a bomb threat
PhD student Alice from Groningen was confronted with such false bomb threats and hotel bookings in November last year. The police initially thought that the reports came from her telephone and the bookings from her credit card. But Alice turned out to have nothing to do with the false reports and bookings. “Fortunately, I had too little money in my account, so that false booking did not work out,” she says. However, Alice was shocked when the police in The Hague called her and first connected her with those false reports and bookings.
After a report of rape by a Chinese guest lecturer from the University of Groningen, she is regularly hit by telephone hacks, cyber attacks and strange reports on her behalf. Her report did not lead to prosecution of the RUG guest lecturer she accused of, who is more influential in China, because Alice was not believed by the police and the Public Prosecution Service in Groningen.
‘Tactics to make people unbelievable’
The Hague police cannot yet say who is responsible for the bomb threats and which other hotels are involved, the spokesperson told Pointer. The police now know that the reports were ‘most likely made from an IP address in China and Hong Kong’. The police do not yet want to give more details about the investigation, Pointer reports.
Beijing critic Wang Jingyu (21), who has fled to the Netherlands, is convinced that the bomb threats are the work of the Chinese government and are intended as a tactic to silence critics of the regime and make them implausible.
He was also initially associated with false bomb threats by the Hague police. Wang is said to have made several bomb threats throughout the country, including in the Marriott Hotel in Rotterdam. Furthermore, Wang was supposedly told by the Belgian police that he had also made a bomb threat there after a reservation at a Marriott Hotel in Belgium. Wang has therefore reported to the police in The Hague as a victim of false bomb threats and false bookings.
Wang receives a threatening text message from Alice’s hacked Telegram account
Jingyu also received apps last October via Alice’s hacked Telegram account, which he and a Dutch journalist had to report to Amsterdam Central Station. If they did not, a bomb threat would be made on his behalf at the Chinese embassy.
Wang Jingyu fled in 2019 as a 17-year-old boy from China after expressing his support for the democracy movement and mass demonstrations in Hong Kong on the internet. His parents sent him abroad as a precaution . His father has since been arrested in China. It doesn’t stop Wang from criticizing the Chinese government. If you google him, you will come across countless news reports and tweets criticizing Beijing.