Chen Guangcheng leaves US embassy: Chinese dissidents who have left in recent years

REBIYA KADEER:

Kadeer was once considered a success in modern China: an ethnic Uighur from
the troubled far western region of Xinjiang who became a millionaire
entrepreneur with a prestigious government advisory post. But she was
arrested in 1999 and sentenced to eight years in prison for mailing
newspaper reports of anti-Chinese unrest to her husband overseas and for
trying to give a list of political prisoners to US congressional staff. She
was released in 2005, shortly before a visit to China by then-U.S. Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice. Kadeer now lives in the U.S.

WANG DAN:

Wang was on China’s list of most wanted student leaders after he helped lead
the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Wang
also was released from prison in 1993 as China pursued the chance to host
the 2000 Summer Olympics and detained once more when the bid fell through.
He was released on medical parole and left for the U.S. in April 1998. Wang
graduated from Harvard University with a doctorate in history in 2008 and
moved to Taiwan.

WU’ER KAIXI:

Wu’er was also on China’s list of most wanted student leaders for the
Tiananmen Square demonstrations. Wearing pyjamas, the young hunger striker
drew attention when he harangued then-Premier Li Peng during a televised
meeting with protesters. Wu’er fled China with the help of a secret network
that helped numerous Tiananmen protesters leave the country through Hong
Kong and Macao. He lives in Taiwan, where he is a businessman and political
commentator. He made headlines in June 2010 when police in Japan arrested
him for allegedly trying to force his way into the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo
on the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown.

LIAO YIWU:

The writer and former political prisoner fled to Germany last July after a
secretive journey with stops in Vietnam and Poland. Authorities had been
especially harsh on his previous efforts to leave China for literary
festivals and other events, blocking him from travelling overseas more than
a dozen times. Before he fled, he said police had warned him several times
that if he published anything overseas again, he would be jailed. He is
known for “The Corpse Walker,” a published series of interviews
with people on the margins of China’s society.

WAN YANHAI:

Wan founded a prominent Aids advocacy group in China but fled to the US in
2010, leaving during a business trip to Hong Kong with his wife and child.
Tighter regulations on overseas donations to Chinese aid groups had hurt his
work, and he said he received dozens of phone calls from police in a single
day shortly before he fled. In the past, the former Health Ministry official
had been detained for up to weeks at a time for advocacy work that included
publicising an AIDS scandal among poor villagers in the 1990s.

YU JIE:

Yu wrote a book critical of the premier called “China’s Best Actor: Wen
Jiabao” and helped found the Independent PEN Center in China, which
fights for freedom of expression. He left in January for the U.S. after
being detained several times last year and being beaten so badly that he
passed out. Yu has said he doesn’t plan to return to China for a few years,
but he thinks authorities won’t let him return because he accused them of
torture. When he left China, the Global Times newspaper taunted him with a
commentary headlined, “Self-imposed exile reflects one’s waning
influence.”

Source: AP

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