He escaped China. Harassment followed him to a New York courtroom

Ma Ju was in the kitchen making dinner on Christmas Eve 2023 when he heard a knock. The woman on the doorstep of his two-story suburban Long Island home held a manila envelope in her hand. “Mr. Ju Ma?” she asked. “Yes,” he said. She told him she was a lawyer from Nassau County, asked for his signature, and handed him the document.

“My eyesight isn’t great,” Ma recalled with a weary chuckle. “I glanced at it briefly and thought, ‘Huh? Who’s suing me?’” He paused, his smile fading. “At the time, I thought it might be a joke.”

Ma, a Hui Muslim originally from China, had arrived in the United States just four years earlier and had been waiting on his asylum claim ever since. But by 2023 he had become a well-known activist and vocal critic of the government in China. Christmas was not a traditional holiday in his faith, but the family had adopted it in exile. “As long as it’s a happy holiday, we’ll celebrate it,” Ma liked to say.

Read more