But others who have fled China and face the same risk of persecution are still being sent back.
Bitter Winter reports that Li Yanli (shown above) first acted on her own, and precipitately, to keep from being deported to China and then benefited from a major and well-publicized campaign to save her (“Church of Almighty God Refugee Li Yanli Can Remain in Spain—But Others Cannot,” December 7, 2023).
Good news for Li Yanli, the Church of Almighty God devotee and performer who tried to commit suicide at Madrid Barajas airport by cutting her wrist on November 3, while she was being deported back to China. The Spanish police still wanted to take her to China after she had recovered from her wounds. However, after the campaign, relayed by several Spanish media, launched by “Bitter Winter” and the Christian group of Spanish lawyers Abogados Cristianos, which also collected 60,000 signatures for a petition, the order of deportation was suspended. After a long wait, Li Yanli had another interview on November 21, and on 22, shortly after 7 pm, she was informed by the police that she could stay in Spain, and that the Asylum and Refugee Office had agreed to further process her asylum application.
While this is a welcome development and a victory for Bitter Winter, Abogados Cristianos, and the thousands who supported Li Yanli, some of her coreligionists were less fortunate….
[One example is] the fate of 32-year-old Liu Qi, whom Spain forcibly deported to China. Obviously, the Spanish authorities believed there were no risks for him there, ignoring a significant academic and legal literature and the decisions of dozens of courts of law throughout the world, which have consistently maintained that being a member of The Church of Almighty God in China is enough to be arrested.
The willingness of the Spanish government to fling persons who have escaped from China back into the maw of the Chinese Communist Party suggests that whatever merits Spain’s policies toward China may have, these policies are also often accommodationist.
According to an analysis by Real Instituto Elcano (which calls the policies “coherent”), “Spain shares the EU’s threefold vision of China as partner, competitor and rival…. From a Spanish perspective, China is an attractive and key economic partner as well as a necessary stakeholder to cope with crucial issues on the global agenda such as climate change and security.”
On the other hand, the Spanish authorities “are not naïve: they are not blind to China’s revisionist behaviour or its willingness to reshape the international order.”
If Spain is inching toward more a more realistic and sensible China policy, let this more realistic and sensible policy sooner rather than later also extend to how it treats the victims of the Chinese government.
Other countries have also proved willing to sacrifice the liberties and lives of refugees from China.
In July 2023, Laotian police arrested Chinese human rights lawyer Lu Siwei as he was boarding a train for Thailand, where he had planned to fly to the United States to join his family there. In September 2023, Laos deported him. Not coincidentally, Laos has been the…beneficiary?…of massive funding from China, leading to massive indebtedness to China.
Also see:
Real Instituto Elcano: “Spain’s informal China policy: a coherent [sic] and Europeanist approach”
“Spain’s China policy reflects these complexities and is based on a nuanced understanding of China, which allows it to cooperate, compete and confront China depending on the situation. This pragmatic approach, which avoids systematically jeopardising the bilateral relationship on ideological grounds, neither eludes normative divergences nor prevents Spain from defending its normative preferences.”
StopTheChinazis.org: “China’s Takeover of Laos”
“ ‘Laos has debt that totals 120% of GDP. Most of that is to China. China kind of owns Laos,’ a friend wrote, sending to me this Washington Post article entitled ‘China’s promise of prosperity brought Laos debt — and distress.’ ”
StopTheChinazis.org: “China Goes Anywhere to Grab Chinese Nationals Like Yang Zewei”
“Nor does China confine such activities to its backyard. The Chinese government has been willing to go anywhere—Great Britain, Canada, the United States, Spain, Serbia—to harass and forcibly repatriate many thousands of Chinese nationals living overseas. One of its methods is to threaten family members still in China.”
