Group Says China Snatched Dissidents in Vietnam

Fri Jul 26, 3:51 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - A U.S-based human rights groups said on Friday it believed Chinese agents had abducted three exiled democracy advocates inside Vietnam and was detaining them in China.

The Free China Movement said in a statement Wang Bingzhang, Yue Wu and Zhang Qi entered Vietnam from Cambodia on June 16 to meet Chinese labor leaders and were caught near the Chinese border 10 days later.

"We believe these individuals were abducted by Chinese agents inside Vietnam on or about June 26 and then escorted, against their will, into China," the group said in an open letter of protest to the Vietnamese ambassador to the United States.

China's Foreign Ministry denied any knowledge of the case and there was no immediate comment from Vietnam's foreign ministry.

The reports of detentions came three months after U.S.-based dissident Yang Jianli was caught in the southwestern province of Yunnan after entering China on a friend's passport.

Yang has not been heard from since.

In 1998, Wang entered China on a false passport and, after a nationwide manhunt, was detained and later expelled.

The Free China Movement, a coalition of more than 30 Chinese pro-democracy organizations around the world, said Wang, Yue and Zhang were being held at an undisclosed location.

It called on the Vietnamese government to investigate the "illegal abduction."

Fang Yuan, a dissident the statement said headed the Chinese Labour Party and who had planned to meet the others in Vietnam but could not get a visa, said the incident was "a testament to the desperate lengths the government will go to stop the evolution of democracy in China."

The Free China Movement said Yue, based in Paris, was one of five labor leaders during the student-led democracy demonstrations centerd on Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989.

It said Zhang had been wanted by the Chinese authorities since 1999 and left for Thailand in 2000. She was granted political asylum in the United States in 2001. It did not give further details.

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