The strange men started showing up at Su Yutong’s Berlin apartment in early June. For weeks, one or two would arrive each day.
Su grew up in China but since 2010 has lived in Germany, where she works as a journalist, including for Radio Free Asia. Her visitors, though, thought they were visiting a prostitute.
“Almost every day different people rang my doorbell,” Su said. “They say they are here for an Asian woman, looking for sex.”
The fake escort ads were just part of the abuse Su says she's experienced over the past 10 months. Bomb threats tied to reservations under Su’s name at hotels in Berlin, Houston and Hong Kong that she didn’t make prompted calls from local police.
A fake Twitter account with her name and the word “bitch” was created. She’s been threatened with doctored nude photographs and forged receipts from adult stores. She said hackers tried to access her social media and bank accounts.
In November, German police told her to leave her apartment after she received rape and death threats, apparently from one particularly aggressive harasser over Telegram. For a time, she said she felt a wave of nausea around strange men in public, though more out of embarrassment than fear, she said.
“I don't know what other things they will do to harass and threaten me, but it has … really affected my life,” Su said.
A target for harassment
Su says she’s been a target of abuse since leaving China in 2010 to live in exile in Germany and continue her work as a reporter. The name-calling and threats and other harassing behaviors picked up, though, after she attended an event to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in June.
She has filed several complaints with the German police. One official initially told Su her case seemed like the work of a particular individual, a singular stalker.
But there is evidence of a broader conspiracy, and Su fears her harassers could have links to the Chinese government — an anxiety shared by other reporters of Chinese descent who have also faced abuse.
Last fall, Su told her editors at RFA about what she was facing. RFA decided to publish her story along with other accounts to show what it can be like to report on China at a time when its officials are intent on protecting the country’s image and extending its global reach.
German police are investigating Su’s case but have refused to comment further. [RFA/JS]
