Chinese Rights Activist Disappears During Journey to Seek Political Asylum

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A rights activist and former columnist at a top Chinese newspaper who had tried to defect to India four months ago has been missing for 10 days after boarding a train in Thailand en route to Laos on a quest to reach western countries, where he planned to apply for political asylum, his wife said Thursday.

Li Xin, a writer for the cutting-edge Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper, fled to New Delhi last October after being recruited by China’s state security police to spy on other activists, with the threat of spying charges hanging over him.

The formerly active campaigner for democratic reform and human rights said authorities pressured him to become an informant after he posted comments online in support of blind Shandong rights activist Chen Guangcheng.

After arriving in India, Li made public confidential documents from his time at the newspaper, revealing the inner workings of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda machine, which included a secret list of topics and sources off limits to media outlets.

Li could not be granted political asylum in India, because the country does not accept applications from Chinese nationals. He then applied for a tourist visa at the American embassy in New Delhi so he could go to the United States and apply for asylum there, but his application was rejected.

Li traveled to Thailand on Jan. 1 and boarded a train nine days later to the northeastern border town of Nong Khai where he tried to enter Laos, but suddenly lost contact with his wife Shi Sanmei, she told RFA’s Mandarin Service.

A friend tried to report the case to the Thai police, but the report was rejected, she said.

“They asked, ‘Why you didn’t you report this to the Chinese embassy,” said Shi, who remains in China.

“But I am not in Thailand, so there is no way to get to the Chinese embassy,” she said. “After all, I cannot leave, so I have no choice.”

Lao authorities

If Shi cannot get any information about Li’s disappearance from police in Thailand, she will try to get information from Lao authorities, she said.

“But now the situation is that Thai authorities have refused to accept Li’s case, so how can I go to Laos?” Shi said.

Shi telephoned Li’s family on Wednesday, hoping they had reported the disappearance to local police, but was unable to reach them, she said.

Later, Li’s aunt told Shi that Li’s father had received her message about the disappearance, Shi said.

“I requested that she accompany Li’s father to report it to the police,” she said.

Last December, authorities in the southern Chinese province Guangdong prevented Shi and the couple’s infant son from leaving the country to join Li after his attempted defection.

Border officials in Shenzhen stopped the two as they tried to cross into neighboring Hong Kong, which has maintained its own internal immigration border since its 1997 handover to Chinese rule.

At the time, Li said he believed authorities slapped the exit ban on his wife and child as a form of retaliation after he leaked information about the inner workings of the Chinese government’s propaganda machine.

Chinese Rights Activist Disappears During Journey to Seek Political Asylum

Chinese Journalist Who Defected is Missing From Thailand


BEIJING ― A Chinese journalist who said he was fed up with a life as a government informant and fled China last year has been missing from Thailand since Jan. 11, his wife said Friday, raising concerns he might have been abducted by Chinese agents.



He Fangmei said she last spoke to her husband, Li Xin, when he was riding a train from Bangkok to Nong Khai. She said she fears the journalist was taken back to China.

Li, formerly a website editor for a Chinese media group, fled last October to India, where he told The Associated Press that he could no longer bear working as a secret informant for the Chinese government. He later traveled to Thailand.

Li's wife said he was planning to seek asylum before he went missing.

The journalist's vanishing is the latest in a string of disappearances of China-related activists in Southeast Asia that have raised suspicions of Chinese government involvement.

Last October, Hong Kong publisher Gui Minhai suddenly disappeared from his apartment in Pattaya. Gui reappeared this week on Chinese state TV, where he said he returned to China to turn himself in for an old crime. His friends insist Gui was forcibly taken away.

Four other people connected to the same Hong Kong publishing company, which sells books banned in China about Chinese politics and politicians, have disappeared.

One of them, Lee Bo, said he returned voluntarily to mainland China in notes to his wife, but supporters believe he was kidnapped and smuggled to the mainland.

Beijing also took back the teenage son of a detained rights lawyer after he fled from China to Myanmar.



After arriving in India, Li, 37, revealed that he was an informant for the government. He said he was coerced into gathering information about fellow activists and journalists after the government detained him for sharing information with the rival Taiwanese government and threatened to imprison him.

Li began his activism when he set up a website devoted to building civil society in 2007. The next year, he signed the '08 Charter, a pro-democracy document written by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. The document landed Liu an 11-year prison sentence on a conviction of inciting to overturn the state, and many signees went on the government's blacklist.

An active member of China's circle of activists, Li worked as an opinion editor for the website of the influential newspaper Southern Metropolis.

Compelled by a desire to change China, Li said he fed information to the Taiwanese government about China's control of the Internet, although Taiwan's foreign ministry declined to verify Li's claim.

Li said he attracted the attention of state security, who asked him to be an informant. After he provided no useful information, Li said he was detained in June 2013 for involvement with Taiwan and had to cave in or risk going to jail.

But he said he was still reluctant to report on other activists and journalists.

"I was very fearful. They could drag me back (to jail) anytime," Li said in an interview in New Delhi. "I did not want to work for them, but I felt I had no choice."

"I believe there are many people like me who are working on behalf of the authoritarian government. But I cannot be one of them," Li said.

Untold numbers of informants help China's government keep tabs on anyone who may pose a threat to the regime, a task authorities have pursued more intensely under President Xi Jinping than they have in decades.

Last year, six Canadian citizens who are members of the Chinese ethnic Uighur Muslim minority told the Globe and Mail newspaper that they were detained while visiting China, blackmailed and bribed by Chinese authorities to spy on activists sympathetic to the Uighur cause in Canada. Uighurs in China have long complained of discrimination and suppression of their religion and culture.

Chinese Journalist Who Defected is Missing From Thailand

Swedish Police Travel to Thailand to Ivestigate Missing Publisher Gui Minhai

BANGKOK – Swedish detectives have travelled to Thailand to look into the disappearance of a Hong Kong-based bookseller who vanished in the kingdom and later resurfaced in Chinese custody, Thai police said Friday.

Gui Minhai, a Swedish national, went missing from his seaside apartment in the resort city of Pattaya in October.

He was one of five people from a Hong Kong publishing house known for producing salacious titles critical of Chinese leaders to have disappeared in recent months as Beijing pursues dissidents far beyond its borders.

Major General Apichart Suriboonya, head of Thai Foreign Affairs Police, told AFP Swedish officers had arrived in the kingdom.

“They came here, not for investigation because they have no legal rights to do so. But they have been sent to help expedite the Thai police investigation,” he said.

Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily reported that Swedish detectives visited Gui’s apartment on Wednesday, interviewing residents and taking copies of the building’s surveillance footage.

Major General Apichart did not comment on the reports, nor did the Swedish Embassy in Bangkok.

more Swedish Police Travel to Thailand to Ivestigate Missing Publisher Gui Minhai | Chiang Rai Times English Language Newspaper

Chinese Journalist Emerges After Disappearing in Thailand

BEIJING ― The wife of a Chinese journalist who disappeared from Thailand while seeking asylum said she's spoken to her husband and that he says he voluntarily returned to China for investigation, but that she believes he was forced to come back.

He Fangmei says she was able to speak with her journalist husband Li Xin on Wednesday when she was called into a police station to receive the call.

For Fangmei this was the first time to speak to her husband, Li Xin, since around 7:40 a.m., Jan. 11, when he was riding a train from Bangkok to Nong Khai.

Li's return to China would be the latest example of Beijing's reach beyond the mainland's borders for people wanted by authorities.

Li fled China in October and told the AP in an interview from India that he left because he had been forced to become an informant and wanted to avoid that work. He later sought shelter in Thailand before disappearing Jan. 11.

Chinese Journalist Emerges After Disappearing in Thailand