Human rights activist Dong Guangping celebrates his arrival in Canada. He arrived in Toronto Friday after fleeing China in May.Courtesy of Dong Guangping/Supplied
Dong Guangping, a Chinese human-rights activist who escaped China by crossing open seas on a rubber dinghy for 40 hours, has finally arrived in Canada, a destination he’d been trying to reach for more than a decade.
His first meal after arriving in Toronto on Friday was a steaming big bowl of noodle soup with shrimp, tomatoes and egg that he had been craving.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail on Saturday, Mr. Dong said he was filled with joy when he stepped off the plane in Toronto and heard officials at Pearson airport say, “Welcome to Canada.”
His friend Sheng Xue met him at the airport. Speaking through Ms. Sheng, a writer and human-rights activist, Mr. Dong said, “I felt so warm” after the greeting from Canadians.
Mr. Dong, 68, has been jailed four times by Beijing for speaking out against the Chinese government’s human-rights violations, as well as for his past attempts to escape China. He and his family had been accepted for refugee resettlement in Canada more than 10 years ago, and his daughter and ex-wife are already here.
He was a policeman in Zhengzhou, China, until his employment was terminated in 1999 after he wrote and signed a public letter commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Mr. Dong previously fled to Thailand in 2015, only to be returned. Then, in 2019, he made a failed attempt to reach Taiwan’s Kinmen Island. In 2020, he crossed illegally into Vietnam before being sent home.
His successful escape in May involved nearly two days at sea in a 3.3-metre rubber boat that brought him to the waters off South Korea’s west coast.
The dissident declined to explain how he had evaded Chinese marine patrols when leaving, saying it could prompt reprisals in his homeland. “I don’t want to get other people in trouble,” he said.
Mr. Dong said he was originally headed for Japan – a 700-kilometre journey according to his calculations – because he felt that country would be less likely to send him back to China.
However, he was diverted off course and aquatic weeds interfered with his engine. Things came to a head after more than 300 kilometres when the watercraft’s engine stopped working properly and his cellphone battery was drained to almost nothing.
The rubber boat that Dong Guangping boarded when he was detained in the waters off South Korea's west coast, at a port in Taean, South Korea, on May 26.Uncredited/The Associated Press
“I didn’t have GPS for my boat and at that point I was scared,” he said.
He saw lights ahead in the fog, but the vessel did not hear his cries for help, so he tried with a second one, which turned out to be a fishing boat. They brought him ashore near Taean, about 150 kilometres southwest of Seoul.
International media have reported on three unsuccessful attempts by Mr. Dong to escape from China, but he said there were even more that failed. He added that he was determined to be free of China’s authoritarian government.
“If you have never experienced the harsh inhumanity and pressure and persecution under Communist tyranny then you won’t understand how strong the desire can be to fight for freedom and democracy and rule of law,” he said.
He remains outspoken about the 1989 crackdown in the vicinity of Tiananmen Square, where Chinese troops attacked students and civilians in Beijing, mowing them down with automatic weapons or crushing them with tanks. China has never provided a death toll for the violence. Rights groups and witnesses say it could run into the thousands.
“The Chinese government is a dictatorship and they were afraid people will challenge their power,” Mr. Dong said. “People should never forget the Tiananmen Square massacre. People should pay respects to those people who gave their lives.”
Asked why he decided to brave the open sea in a small boat, Mr. Dong said if he was the kind of person who worried about such things he would not have chosen the life he has led since the 1990s.
“I knew I needed to keep going,” he said of the drive to make the journey across the Yellow Sea separating China and South Korea.
Back in 2015, when Mr. Dong escaped to Thailand, his family joined him there days after. He, his now-ex-wife and his daughter were recognized as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Canada accepted them for resettlement. While he was deported back to China, his family continued on to Canada, where they now live.
Mr. Dong hopes to shield his daughter and ex-wife from any fallout that results from his record as a human-rights dissident. “I don’t want my activity to affect their life here, so I don’t really want to talk about them,” he said.
Alex Neve, a visiting professor of human rights at the University of Ottawa, said Mr. Dong is the “very definition of an indomitable spirit.”
He said there was initial concern over whether South Korea would send Mr. Dong back to China but that quickly dissipated.
“At a time when global respect for international law and human rights is in disarray, this is a powerful reminder that when states do live up to those fundamental obligations, as South Korea and Canada have in this instance, freedom prevails,” said Mr. Neve, who was a long-time secretary-general at Amnesty International Canada.
Mr. Dong, whose working life also included stints as a truck driver and electrician, said one of his first tasks will be to find a job. He said he was stripped of any pensions owed to him after being sentenced to prison in China.
He said he doesn’t want to be a burden on Canadian taxpayers.
“I want to be a truck driver,” he said, making hand gestures that mimicked turning a steering wheel.
Mr. Dong said he’s prepared for the possibility that the Chinese government will try to harass him in Canada.
But he’s also worried about repercussions in his birthplace.
“I definitely believe the Chinese authorities are trying to find a way to hurt me,” he said.
“The more harsh part that I cannot tolerate is they are trying to harass and put pressure and persecute people who helped me in China – my relatives and my friends – and this is the part that is really evil.”