A Canadian woman whose father is a dissident jailed in China was on Wednesday briefly detained and “bullied” by security agents while transiting through Beijing’s main airport, the Toronto-based Globe and Mail newspaper said.
Ties between the two nations have been strained since the arrest last month in Vancouver of a senior Chinese executive on a US arrest warrant, which was followed by China’s detention of two Canadians, on suspicion of endangering state security.
In the most recent incident, the woman, Ti-Anna Wang (王天安), was pulled off a plane by six police officers, separated from her husband and detained with her daughter for almost two hours while connecting in Beijing en route to Toronto from Seoul, the paper said.
“It was a shocking, terrifying and senseless ordeal with no purpose but to bully, punish and intimidate me and my family,” Wang was quoted as saying in an e-mail to Irwin Cotler, head of the Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
China has expressed outrage over Canada’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟), chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co, who US authorities alleged has deceived international banks into clearing transactions with Iran.
In what many analysts and diplomats believe to be retribution, China has since detained two Canadians and on Monday sentenced a third to death for drug smuggling after an unusual and swift retrial.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denied there is a link.
The Globe and Mail said that Wang was denied use of her phone and computer, and was not allowed to contact the Canadian embassy.
Chinese officials told her she was not allowed to return to Canada and put her on a flight back to South Korea, it added.
Wang’s father, Wang Bingzhang (王炳章), is a pro-democracy activist abducted in Vietnam in 2002 by Chinese agents before being imprisoned for life in China on charges of espionage and terrorism, the rights group Human Rights in China has said.
The Globe and Mail said that Ti-Anna Wang was barred from entering China last week when she arrived at Hangzhou airport, despite having obtained a visa in August last year to visit her ailing jailed father.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese