New York: A large number of people demonstrated outside a Chinatown building in New York, housing a foreign police station that is accused of harassing and spying on Chinese nationals in the city, media reports said.

More than 60 protestors gathered Saturday morning outside 107 East Broadway where the ChangLe Association Inc, a non-profit, owns and operates a “service station” above a noodle shop where security experts say operatives conduct surveillance against dissidents in the Chinese community, reports New York Post.

“It’s a very serious problem in the Chinese community,” said Toni Cai, one of the protestors. Cai is a pro-democracy activist imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party twice in China for promoting free speech. He immigrated to the US in 2000, he told The Post.

“The CCP has coerced the Chinese community severely and has a large influence on them here in the state, through American and Asian-American politicians,” he said. “I am very worried, but I want to support the community leaders who are honest and openly against what the CCP is doing.”

Jing Zhang, founder and executive director of Women’s Rights in China, echoed the thought as she joined the protesters outside the Lower Manhattan building.

“People need to support each other,” Zhang told the newspaper “We all came here to be free.”

The Manhattan station is part of a web of more than 100 such law enforcement offices set up around the world by the People’s Republic of China, ostensibly to help Chinese nationals renew their government-issued identification and drivers’ licenses, the newspaper reported.