A Chinese activist detained in Thailand was prevented at the last minute from boarding a flight to Vancouver this week, supporters say.
Last year, the activist, Zhang Xinyan, was one of 15 people elected to the Toronto-based dissident “Hong Kong Parliament” – which claims to represent Hong Kongers in exile – prompting authorities in the Chinese territory to place a $36,000 bounty on her head for subversion.
A practitioner of Falun Gong, a religious movement banned and heavily suppressed in China, Ms. Zhang has lived in Thailand since 2014. In May, the 55-year-old was detained in Bangkok for allegedly overstaying her visa, prompting fears she would be deported to Hong Kong or mainland China.
Ms. Zhang has protected refugee status with the United Nations, and Sheng Xue, a Toronto-based activist, said she was in the process of being resettled to Canada.
“Canadian diplomatic officials in Thailand conducted interviews, medical examinations, and biometric data collection inside the detention centre, eventually finalizing her flight itinerary from Bangkok to Vancouver for July 8,” Ms. Sheng said in an e-mail. “A few close friends and I were already preparing to travel to Vancouver to celebrate her rescue.”
On Wednesday, however, Ms. Sheng said she received a call from Ms. Zhang informing her that “at the absolute final moment before her departure, Thai police abruptly intervened and forcibly blocked her from leaving the country.”
“Her journey to freedom has been cancelled, and she remains trapped inside the Bangkok immigration prison,” Ms. Sheng added.
Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Global Affairs Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hong Kong’s National Security Bureau also did not respond. After Ms. Zhang’s arrest in May, the bureau said, “No fugitive should harbour the illusion that they can evade criminal liability by fleeing Hong Kong.”
Ms. Sheng said Ms. Zhang’s last-minute detention raised concerns about Beijing’s “long-arm jurisdiction” and had echoes of the case of Dong Guangping, a Chinese human-rights activist who in 2015 was also prevented from travelling from Thailand to Canada.
Mr. Dong was forcibly returned to China, from where he unsuccessfully attempted to flee two more times, before travelling by rubber boat to South Korea in May and eventually flying to Toronto last month, finally reuniting with his family after a decade.
A friend of Mr. Dong’s, Ms. Sheng was involved in lobbying for his resettlement in Canada and raising media attention around his case.
“History is on the verge of repeating itself,” she said. More than a decade after Mr. Dong was blocked from leaving Bangkok, Chinese President “Xi Jinping’s apparatus of transnational repression and humanitarian crimes has visibly cast its net over Thailand once more.”
“Zhang Xinyan is currently in immediate, extreme danger of being abducted back to China,” Ms. Sheng said.
Elmer Yuen, a Vancouver-based commentator and organizer of the “Hong Kong Parliament” with a $180,000 bounty on his head, urged Canada to intervene to secure Ms. Zhang’s release.
“We cannot allow Xi Jinping’s transnational abduction apparatus to succeed yet again,” he said. “To let it happen would mark a disastrous failure for the international community in the realm of global human rights.”
Governments in Southeast Asia have long been criticized for failing to uphold refugee protections and bending to Beijing’s demands to return dissidents and alleged fugitives.
Last February, dozens of Uyghur asylum seekers were deported from Thailand to China, despite warnings from human-rights groups and the United Nations that they faced risk of torture and ill-treatment.
Thanida Piyachot, a campaigner with international NGO Fortify Rights, said Ms. Zhang’s detention “shows clearly that Thailand’s failure to recognize refugee status remains a major problem, leaving many refugees at risk of arrest, detention and forced return.”