Beijing raps Ottawa's knuckles
(April 15, 2006)GEOFFREY YORK
From Friday's Globe and Mail
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BEIJING — In a stiff warning to Canada, the Chinese authorities have protested the decision by the federal government to allow a former political prisoner to emigrate to Canada.
Canada should not become "a haven for Chinese criminals and offenders," the Chinese government said yesterday in its first response to Ottawa's decision to grant entry to Lu Decheng.
Mr. Lu, a 43-year-old bus driver who spent nine years in prison for splashing red paint on the portrait of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square, flew to Vancouver on Tuesday after being released from a detention centre in Thailand.
He was given an immigration visa by Ottawa this month, in defiance of Beijing's contention that he is a criminal because he illegally crossed the border from China to Thailand in 2004 while still on parole.
Despite the warning, Beijing does not seem to be demanding Mr. Lu's return to China.
That could mean that he won't become the subject of a protracted diplomatic tussle -- unlike another Chinese fugitive, accused smuggler Lai Changxing, who has been fighting a legal battle to stay in Canada as a refugee. China has been demanding Mr. Lai's return since he fled the country in 1999.
According to a spokesman for the Canadian embassy in Beijing yesterday, the Chinese government has not so far transmitted any formal protest to Canada over the Lu case, and it has not requested his extradition to China.
Nor is there any mention of an extradition request in the brief statement issued yesterday by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The ministry declined to answer a question about whether it would seek Mr. Lu's return to China from Canada.
The ministry's statement did not accuse Canada by name, but it left no doubt that it was referring to Canada and Thailand when it criticized the "countries" that are involved in sheltering Mr. Lu.
"Chinese citizen Lu Decheng sneaked across international borders in August, 2004, which violated Chinese laws," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement released yesterday to The Globe and Mail. "We expect the involved countries to improve their vigilance and not to become a haven for Chinese criminals and offenders."
Mr. Lu is one of three young men who hurled paint at the Mao portrait in 1989, after they joined the student protests on Tiananmen Square. The three men were given heavy prison sentences, ranging from 16 years to life. One of the three, Yu Dongyue, was driven insane by his lengthy punishment, which included years of torture and solitary confinement.
Cheuk Kwan, a Canadian activist who helped lobby for Mr. Lu's entry to Canada, rejected the Chinese criticism. "It's pretty obvious that Mr. Lu is a political dissident and he has served more than enough time in jail for what he did in Tiananmen Square," Mr. Kwan said. "I don't feel any remorse for helping him."
Even if Mr. Lu committed a crime by splashing paint on the Mao portrait in 1989, he should have been charged with a minor offence such as vandalism, not the "counter-revolutionary activities" that formed the basis of his official conviction, Mr. Kwan said.
_(博讯自由发稿区发稿) (boxun.com)
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