Chinese dissident arrives in Canada after fleeing by dinghy

Dong Guangping, a Chinese political dissident, arrived in Canada on Friday, June 26, following an Air Canada flight to Toronto, according to his friend Sheng Xue, a Chinese Canadian activist.

Dong had fled China in May by traveling in a 3.3-meter inflatable boat to South Korean waters, where he was detained by the country's coast guard for allegedly violating immigration law. It was his fourth known attempt to escape China. At a court hearing in South Korea, he expressed hope to reunite with his wife and daughters, who had already been resettled in Canada.

A former police officer in China, Dong had been detained multiple times for activism. 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 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, according to statements from Amnesty International. He previously escaped to Thailand and Vietnam, but authorities deported him back to China, and an attempt to swim to a Taiwanese island was unsuccessful.