A Chinese dissident has made a daring 30-hour escape from China by sea to South Korea, his fourth try to try to flee authorities in his homeland and reunite together with his household who’ve been granted asylum in Canada.
Dong Guangping, a former police officer who has confronted years of imprisonment and detention for his activism, fled utilizing an inflatable boat and was picked up by South Korean Coast Guard on Monday, his lawyer and a fellow activist informed NCS.
Dong – who has additionally been granted asylum in Canada – beforehand fled to Thailand and later Vietnam, solely to discover authorities in these nations detain and deport him again to China, sparking anguish for his household and criticism from rights teams and United Nations officers.
His arrival in South Korea might now put strain on the administration of President Lee Jae Myung – who took workplace final yr and has tried to reset his nation’s typically shaky ties with China.
South Korean Coast Guard officers confirmed fishermen noticed an unidentified boat on Monday night and reported it to the authorities.
The Coast Guard informed NCS the particular person on the boat was a Chinese nationwide man in his 60s, however declined to verify his id below to the nation’s privateness safety legislation.
Dong’s lawyer, Kim Joo-kwang, confirmed his id with NCS, however mentioned he couldn’t share additional particulars as a result of the Coast Guard’s investigation is ongoing.
Sheng Xue, a Chinese Canadian activist, mentioned she had spoken to Dong by telephone since his arrival in South Korea, including that the Coast Guard had additionally confirmed his id to her.
“For a long time, we discussed ways to escape China,” she informed NCS.
Dong informed Sheng he spent greater than 30 hours on the water since leaving Weihai, a coastal metropolis in China’s japanese Shandong province.
“When I talked with him, he said ‘I got here!’. He was pretty proud of it,” she recalled.
He mentioned his boat engine broke down as he approached the coast of Taean, a county in western South Korea. He had not slept for 2 days and was about to faint when he arrived in South Korea’s waters, in accordance to Sheng.
“He was lucky to get close to the shore,” she mentioned. “It [was] a small boat on the sea, so it’s very hard to control.”
Rights group Human Rights in China has referred to as on South Korea to shield Dong and never ship him again.
“For more than a decade, he has never ceased striving for liberty and reunion with his family,” the group mentioned. “That a man nearing seventy years old was driven to cross open seas in a small inflatable boat is itself a devastating indictment of China’s human rights situation.”
NCS has reached out to the international ministries of each Canada and South Korea for remark in addition to the Chinese embassy in Seoul.
China’s international ministry declined to touch upon the case when requested about it at a daily press briefing on Wednesday.
Dong, 68, labored as a police officer in Zhengzhou, a metropolis in China’s central Henan province, earlier than he was fired for co-signing a letter commemorating the tenth anniversary of the bloody crackdown on protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
He was imprisoned for 3 years in 2001 for activism and arrested once more in May 2014 for taking part in one other memorial for Tiananmen Square victims, in accordance to Amnesty International.
In 2015, Dong fled to Thailand together with his spouse and daughter, the place the three of them sought refugee standing from the UN.
While his spouse and daughter have been ready to transfer to Canada, Dong was forcibly returned to China by the Thai authorities, regardless of appeals from his household and rights teams on the time. He was sentenced to 3.5 years in jail and launched in 2019.
Barred from leaving the nation, Dong tried unsuccessfully to swim to Kinmen, an island managed by Taiwan a number of kilometers away from China’s east coast.
In 2020, he was ready to illegally cross into Vietnam, however was ultimately arrested and once more despatched again by Vietnamese authorities in 2022. He was sentenced to 11 months in jail in China for “illegal border crossing” and was launched in October 2023, in accordance to the worldwide human rights group Front Line Defenders.
During Dong’s disappearance at the moment, his household in Canada issued public appeals for his whereabouts, together with delivering letters to the Chinese and Vietnamese embassies in Ottawa.
His daughter Katherine Dong beforehand mentioned he had made so many makes an attempt to flee China as a result of “his dream of being reunited with family was so strong.”
“And then again that dream of freedom was snatched away,” she mentioned on the time. “I know that in China he will face more persecution, more mistreatment, more injustice.”
In response to his current escape, Dong’s household declined to remark by means of Sheng and different pals.
In current years, China has tightened its grip on protests and political dissent, aided by subtle censorship and surveillance by means of facial recognition and different synthetic intelligence instruments.
That’s pushed some Chinese dissidents towards extra unconventional escape routes, as an alternative of travelling by means of neighboring nations resembling Vietnam or Thailand, which have a mixed record on defending Chinese dissidents.
In August 2023, a Chinese dissident crossed the sea from China’s japanese Shandong province to the South Korean port metropolis Incheon — a journey of about 400 kilometers (250 miles) — on a jet ski.
The man, believed to be Chinese activist Kwon Pyong, made the daring crossing carrying solely a helmet, binoculars, a compass and 5 25-liter (6.6 gallon) gas tanks tied to the jet ski, in accordance to the South Korea’s Coast Guard.
Canada has an extended observe document of offering sanctuary to Chinese dissidents.
Many Chinese activists have additionally discovered security within the US through the years. But that avenue has been narrowed by the Trump administration’s dramatic restrictions on the variety of refugees allowed to enter the nation yearly, with an exception for White South Africans.
It is unclear whether or not Dong plans to apply for refugee standing in South Korea, which is thought for notoriously strict immigration insurance policies together with requests for asylum.
The Coast Guard informed NCS Dong has been arrested on suspicion of violating immigration legislation and that his case will later be handed to prosecutors.
Sheng has written to Canada’s division of world affairs about Dong’s case and mentioned she urged South Korean authorities not to return Dong to China.
“Given his history, any forcible repatriation would place him at grave risk of imprisonment, torture, disappearance, and potentially death,” she wrote in her letter to Global Affairs Canada.
NCS’s Ivan Watson contributed to this report.