Academic Claims Police Silenced After Break-Ins Tied to CCP Interference Research

Professor Anne-Marie Brady speaking at the symposium titled ‘Upholding Liberty, Countering Interference!’ in Auckland, New Zealand, on Feb. 21, 2026. Li Tong/The Epoch TimesAUCKLAND, New Zealand—After her home was burgled in the wake of a ground-breaking exposé into CCP foreign interference, scholar Anne-Marie Brady says police were hamstrung from speaking openly. In 2017, Brady released her paper, “Magic Weapons: China’s Political Influence Activities Under Xi Jinping (pdf),” but her home would later be burgled twice (in December 2017 and on Feb. 14, 2018) with her laptop stolen.Her car was also tampered with and she received a written threat.The professor from the University of Canterbury maintains CCP agents or sympathisers were likely involved, and despite complaining to police, they were apparently unable to deal with it openly.“I thought our police were part of that, and then we discovered, ‘Oh my God, they have been infiltrated …’” she said in her address to the “Upholding Liberty, Countering Interference!” symposium in Auckland last month.“I had some good police officers who knew straight away, and they saw what was going on, but they couldn’t, in New Zealand’s situation, say it out loud, and they told me about problems with New Zealand Police that were worrying them terribly,” she said.Brady said law enforcement had steadily come to a different understanding of the situation, noting they were “reluctantly changing.”She said that over the last decade, the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) had appeared before parliamentary inquiries to address foreign interference from Beijing.“We’re just gonna keep the pressure on them, because we need them to be what we think that they are, which is defending our interests, and defending our laws,” Brady said, adding that her country’s intelligence services needed the “public license” to continue their work in this area.The Epoch Times contacted New Zealand Police for a response.At the time, then-Detective Superintendent Stu Allsop-Smith said there were no further lines of inquiry to pursue.“Police have taken these incidents very seriously and a lengthy, detailed and extensive investigation has been conducted,” he said, as reported by RNZ.“This has involved all necessary police resources including detailed forensic analysis, interviews and expert advice.