HONG KONG (AP) — A Chinese language political dissident who had fled to South Korea final month in a dinghy has arrived in Canada, his pal stated on social media on Saturday.
Dong Guangping was aboard a 3.3-meter (10.8-foot) inflatable boat within the waters off a western South Korean island in Could when he was detained by South Korea’s coast guard for allegedly violating the nation’s immigration legislation. It was his fourth identified try to flee China.
Showing at a courtroom listening to in South Korea, he advised reporters that he hopes to go to Canada to reunite together with his spouse and daughters, who’ve already been resettled there, in keeping with South Korean media.
In a publish Saturday on X, his pal Sheng Xue, a Chinese language Canadian activist, stated Dong had landed in Toronto following an Air Canada flight on Friday.
“He simply had an enormous bowl of noodles with eggs, tomatoes and shrimps,” she wrote within the publish, including that she has spent greater than 10 years attempting to get him out of China.
She hooked up a photograph of Dong in a automobile together with her and one other picture of Dong holding a bowl.
Dong, a former police officer in China, had beforehand been detained a number of instances for his activism. He was imprisoned for 3 years in 2001 for “inciting subversion of state energy” and spent greater than eight months behind bars after being arrested in 2014 for taking part in a memorial for victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, in keeping with previous statements from Amnesty Worldwide.
He beforehand escaped to Thailand and Vietnam, however authorities there deported him again to China. Dong additionally unsuccessfully tried to swim to a Taiwanese island.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has not instantly commented.
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