China’s evil revealed

Dissident’s fiancee held in secret Dubai jail on Beijing’s orders

DUBAI: A young woman on the run with her fiance, a Chinese dissident, claims she was held for weeks at a secret “black site” jail run by the Chinese embassy in Dubai.

The revelations throw new light on the extent of Beijing’s campaign against dissidents abroad and the help it is receiving from authoritarian regimes, including western allies.

Wu Huan, 26, claims she was held with two women she believed were members of China’s mainly Muslim Uighur minority. A number of countries, including Muslim ones such as the UAE, have arrested and deported Uighurs since China launched a campaign four years ago to enforce loyalty in Xinjiang province.

Ms Wu had travelled to Dubai to publicise the plight of her fiance, Wang Jingyu, 19, who was arrested by police at the city’s airport in April while on a stopover and held for several weeks. During that time he was interrogated by officials from the Chinese embassy.

He was released on May 27 and put on a plane to Turkey after his case was taken up by the US, where he has residency. However, on the same day Ms Wu was taken from her hotel room by Emirati police, held in a police station for three days and then taken to a villa whose rooms had been converted into cells with heavy metal doors.

She says she was detained there for eight days and released only after agreeing to sign documents incriminating Mr Wang.

“I was really scared and was forced to sign the documents,” she said.

Mr Wang left China two years ago at the urging of his parents after he posted comments online in support of protesters in Hong Kong. But he came to the attention of Chinese authorities only when he accused them in new posts of covering up the deaths of Chinese soldiers in a clash on the Indian border last year.

An online harassment campaign was mounted against Mr Wang and police raided his family home in the city of Chongqing and took his parents away for questioning.

Ms Wu and Mr Wang were reunited in Turkey and then travelled to Ukraine, but while there Mr Wang received threatening messages saying he was now wanted for “subversion of state power”. “I want to remind you that China and Ukraine have an extradition agreement,” one warned.

The couple are now in the Netherlands, where they have applied for asylum.