Chinese dissident arrives in Toronto after dinghy escape
Dong Guangping landed Friday following months of attempts to flee China; his wife and daughters were already resettled here.
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Dong Guangping, a Chinese political dissident who fled to South Korea by inflatable boat in May, has arrived in Toronto after a decades-long fight to escape persecution in his home country.
He landed Friday on an Air Canada flight. His friend Sheng Xue, a Chinese Canadian activist, posted on social media Saturday that Dong had just eaten a big bowl of noodles with eggs, tomatoes and shrimps. Sheng said she spent more than 10 years trying to get him out of China.
Dong's journey has been harrowing. A former police officer, he was imprisoned for three years in 2001 for "inciting subversion of state power" and spent more than eight months behind bars after his 2014 arrest for participating in a Tiananmen Square memorial. He had previously escaped to Thailand and Vietnam, but authorities deported him back to China. He also unsuccessfully tried to swim to a Taiwanese island.
In May, Dong was detained by South Korea's coast guard while aboard a 3.3-metre inflatable boat off a western island for allegedly violating immigration law. It was his fourth known attempt to flee China. At a South Korean court hearing, he told reporters he hoped to come to Canada to reunite with his wife and daughters, who had already been resettled here.