Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015-09-17
Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie
Last month, three Chinese dissidents from the southwestern megacity of Chongqing
(From L-R) Chinese dissidents Wang Rui, Lu Ning, Su Qianlong, Shi Jian, Wang Rui and Yang Lu Yini prepare to leave Taiwan for Guam in a sailboat, September 2015. Photo courtesy of Chen Rongli
escaped by boat to Taiwan, before attempting a hazardous journey across the Pacific Ocean with two other Chinese dissidents, to Guam.
Lu Ning, Su Qianlong and Shi Jian,bought a small sailing boat with an auxiliary engine in China’s eastern Shandong province for around 200,000 yuan (U.S. $31,400), before sailing through the East China Sea and across the Taiwan Strait to the democratic island of Taiwan.
Their first voyage took a circuitous route, as they lost their way several times, with more than 30 days and at least a thousand kilometers (620 miles) at sea before they arrived in Taiwanese waters.
The three picked up Wang Rui and Yang Lu Yini in Taiwan, and the five escapees had planned to apply for political asylum from the U.S. government on the Pacific island of Guam.
But the group, who are all in their twenties and thirties, never got that far.
Instead, their boat ran into difficulties during strong winds and high waves off the island’s coast, and they were forced to appeal to the Taiwan authorities for help.
“On the afternoon of Sept. 12, we found a boat with four men and a woman aboard near Nanshalun [in Taiwan waters],” a marine rescue bureau told reporters at the time. [FULL STORY]
