Wife, son of prominent Chinese dissident arrive in US

HAYWARD, Calif. – The pregnant wife and 4-year-old son of a prominent Chinese dissident have sought refuge in the San Francisco Bay Area after leaving Thailand, where she said she no longer felt safe.

Lui Xiaodong, 40, the wife of Zhao Changqing, arrived with the boy Tuesday from Bangkok and will live with supporters in suburban Hayward.

“My husband is a political activist and fights for freedom and democracy, which puts him in the position of being the enemy of a totalitarian state,” Lui told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. “We have seen that the government is likely to use the family as a hostage against activists like my husband. That’s why we left and will be safe here.”

The 47-year-old Zhao has been a leading defender of human rights and democracy in China since the 1989 Tiananmen Students Movement. As a former student leader and a prominent political “prisoner of conscience,” he has been imprisoned five times in 27 years.

Liu, whose baby is due Aug. 23, said her husband was released a week ago and is living in China under heavy surveillance. She and her son left China for Bangkok in May, but she said she didn’t feel safe there.

“I knew the stories. That’s why I was anxious. I was afraid they’d kidnap me and take me back like they had done to other people,” Liu said.

Liu said she spoke to her husband while travelling and he is doing fine physically but having difficulty finding a permanent home. She said he will stay in China to continue his work.

In 2005, Zhao refused to participate in a flag-raising ceremony or sing the national anthem. He was put into solitary confinement for more than a month. He was later returned to solitary confinement for refusing to take part in military drills and for receiving Falun Gong members, according to published reports.

Zhao was part of a loose network of grass-roots activists known as the New Citizens Movement who were targeted in 2013 by Chinese authorities as part of a broad crackdown on dissent.

The movement was known in China’s beleaguered community of activists for staging small protests to call for education equality or the disclosure of public officials’ assets to curb corruption.

Chinese authorities found Zhao and three other activists guilty of “gathering a crowd to disturb order in a public” for planning street protests and sentenced Zhao in April 2014 to two years and six months’ imprisonment.

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Bender reported from San Francisco.