Group accuses China of abducting dissidents at Vietnam border

Fri Jul 26, 2:31 AM ET
By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING - A pro-democracy activist accused Chinese authorities Friday of abducting three exiled Chinese dissidents while they were traveling in Vietnam.

Wang Bingzhang, Yue Wu, and Zhang Qi haven't been heard from for almost a month. Earlier this week, the U.S. State Department confirmed Wang's disappearance.

The three arrived in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on June 16 to meet Chinese labor leaders to promote a fledgling labor movement, said Wang Xizhe, co-chair of the China Democracy Party.

On June 26, they were abducted by Chinese security forces along the border of China and Vietnam, said Wang, who lives in Oakland, California. He is not related to Wang Bingzhang.

"The security forces lured them away and then caught them like fish on hooks," Wang said.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry ( news - web sites) said Friday it knew nothing about the case. In the southern province of Yunnan, which borders Vietnam, police officials and the Frontier Troop of the People's Armed Police said they had not heard about the alleged abductions.

All three dissidents are being held in an undisclosed location in China, the China Democracy Party said. The group is part of the Washington D.C.-based Free China Movement, a coalition of some 30 Chinese pro-democracy organizations around the world.

Wang Bingzhang was a medical student in China when he started speaking out against the Communist government and was jailed twice. He went into exile in Canada in 1979 and, in the 1980s, lived in New York, where he published the pro-democracy magazine China Spring and organized the Chinese Alliance for Democracy.

In 1998, Wang Bingzhang slipped into China without permission, saying he planned to organize a Chinese Democracy and Justice Party to press for free elections and civil liberties. He was caught within a few weeks and deported.

Yue, who lives in Paris, was a labor leader in the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the China Democracy Party said.

Zhang is a leader of Zhong Gong, a banned health and meditation sect, and has been wanted by the Chinese government since 1999, the group said. She escaped from China to Thailand in 2000, and arrived in the United States in September 2001. She was granted political asylum later that year.

Wang's daughter, Wang Qingyan, said the three told friends they were going sightseeing along the Vietnam-Chinese border.

The last time Wang heard from her father was in an e-mail June 21.

"He said he was traveling and that he was fine. He told me not to worry ... I haven't heard from him since," Wang said Friday by telephone from San Gabriel, California, east of Los Angeles.

In a China Democracy Party press release, Fang Yuan, chairman of the Chinese Labor Party, called the alleged kidnappings a "testament to the desperate lengths the government will go to stop the evolution of democracy in China."

Reached Friday at his home in Australia, Fang said he last heard from Wang the evening of June 26.

"Wang called me and told me there was a possibility he would try to enter China," Fang said.

He and Wang had planned to contact each other again June 29.