New York, June 28 (dpa/GNA) – Chinese government critic, Dong Guangping, who had fled to South Korea on a motorized rubber dinghy across the sea, has arrived in Canada after weeks of uncertainty, according to a post on X by Chinese-Canadian journalist and human rights activist Sheng Xue.
In her post on Saturday, she Dong landed in Toronto on Friday, bringing an end to his long-running effort to leave China. At the end of May, Dong reached South Korea after a 30-hour journey in a motorized rubber dinghy. He later told the New York Times he believed he might die from exhaustion during the crossing, saying he had never previously steered such a boat and was “already in a terrible state.”
His stay in South Korea had remained unclear. Although a district court rejected a request for pre-trial detention on illegal entry charges, Dong was reportedly taken to a refugee centre in Incheon near Seoul, according to the Yonhap news agency.
He had expressed a wish to seek asylum in Canada, where his wife and daughter live. Dong formerly worked as a police officer in China until 1999, when he was dismissed after signing a public petition marking the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
In the years that followed, the authorities repeatedly arrested him because of his activism. Since 2015, he had made several attempts to leave China, but was repeatedly deported back to his home country
He was last deported from Vietnam in 2022.
GAN