A Chinese political dissident who fled to South Korea last month in a dinghy has arrived in Canada. His friend announced the news on social media on Saturday.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/55297201

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A Chinese political dissident who had fled to South Korea last month in a dinghy has arrived in Canada, his friend said on social media on Saturday.

Dong Guangping was aboard a 3.3-meter (10.8-foot) inflatable boat in the waters off a western South Korean island in May when he was detained by South Korea’s coast guard for allegedly violating the country’s immigration law. It was his fourth known attempt to flee China.

Appearing at a court hearing in South Korea, he told reporters that he hopes to go to Canada to reunite with his wife and daughters, who have already been resettled there, according to South Korean media.

In a post Saturday on X, his friend Sheng Xue, a Chinese Canadian activist, said Dong had landed in Toronto following an Air Canada flight on Friday.

“He just had a big bowl of noodles with eggs, tomatoes and shrimps,” she wrote in the post, adding that she has spent more than 10 years trying to get him out of China.

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    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      31·
      5 hours ago

      You have to read the article.

      Dong, a former police officer in China, has been detained several times for his activism. He lost his job as a police officer in 1999 after he co-signed a letter commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, according to Amnesty International.

    • MrQuallzin@pie.eyeofthestorm.placeEnglish
      21·
      5 hours ago

      He was imprisoned for three years in 2001 for “inciting subversion of state power” and spent more than eight months behind bars after being arrested in 2014 for participating in a memorial for victims of the Tiananmen crackdown

      Just because a something is lawful doesn’t make it right.

      • TimothyOilpants@lemmy.ca
        14·
        5 hours ago

        According to you?

        Your moral code should define the legal codes for all humankind? Do you not believe in the right to self-determination?

        • BigJohnnyHines@lemmy.ca
          11·
          19 minutes ago

          Yet you seem to think the current Chinese government’s legal code should define morality for all humankind? lol

          • TimothyOilpants@lemmy.ca
            11·
            2 hours ago

            …And a good chunk of the world has colonial capitalism and centuries of out-group exploitation to thank for whatever prosperity their nation enjoys. Also, a good chunk of the world’s high-idealed systems would undoubtedly crumble under the weight of 1,400,000,000 people.

            I’m not saying that everything China does is how I would like to see things done; but I suspect we could agree that letting dissension fester until radicals storm your houses of government and compromise your elections isn’t a workable solution either.

            As a secular humanist, I have to weigh the casualties of a system against the good it provides its body populace. With most liberal western democracies currently facing extreme wealth disparity, working class desperation, and some level of existential crises over ideological extremism; maybe we should reserve some level of judgement until WE have lifted 800,000,000 people out of poverty.

            I’m not sure that any of the ongoing experiments in absolute individual liberty are going particularly well…

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
    131·
    16 hours ago

    Let’s hope for him that China won’t be able to fuck with his life too much in Canada; though at least AFAIK they don’t just assassinate people on foreign soil like Russia does.

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      52·
      6 hours ago

      If they live in the regions that had the Chinese “police” stations, they might get harassed. A friend of mine had a mainlander room mate till the Chinese police kept showing up and “urging” him to return home. One day he was just gone.

    • rozodru@piefed.worldEnglish
      53·
      9 hours ago

      sure, Don’t go to BC and don’t go to Waterloo, Ontario and stay far away from Spadina in Toronto.

    • HotznplotznOPEnglish
      92·
      9 hours ago

      Yes, let’s hope the best. Canada ranks among the Western countries most targeted by the Chinese government (as per Citizen Lab and other reports). Important ethnic Chinese organisations have been effectively taken over by Beijing, as have most Chinese language media. Chinese embassies and consulates monitor the Chinese ethnic community and coordinate United Front activities.

      Addition:

      A Chinese dissident died suddenly in B.C. This ex-spy who snooped on him says it may not have been an accident

      … For 15 years, Eric worked for the 1st Bureau at China’s Ministry of Public Security, a unit that specializes in surveillance of dissidents abroad. He previously told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that he spied on a Japanese-based cartoonist and a YouTuber exiled in Australia. Often, he said, his cover was working for real companies in the countries where he was deployed — companies that collaborated with China’s secret police.

      For example, while on assignment in Cambodia, his cover was with the Prince Group, a multibillion-dollar conglomerate with interests in real estate and financial and consumer services. (The company did not reply to messages from Radio-Canada.)

    • nyan@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      22·
      8 hours ago

      Kind of hard to cross the Pacific in a dinghy. I’m sure his first target was “any civilized country”.