China: Information on voluntary and involuntary returnees since 1989 (residency, employment, etc.)

Very little information is currently available to the IRBDC in Ottawa on the treatment (residency permit, employment status) of those few who have returned to China since June 1989. One article from the Globe and Mail indicates that the Chinese who had left their homeland for Japan in May 1989 were returned to China in December 1989 and March 1990, when the Chinese government pledged that deportees would not face harsh treatment upon return. [ Edith Terry, "Chinese Boat People Deported by Japan", The Globe and Mail, 23 March 1990, p.A8.] The deportees had threatened to commit suicide if returned to China for fear of imprisonment and mistreatment. [ Ibid.] Their fate, however, remains unknown. At the end of April 1990, a Chinese who hijacked a plane to Japan was returned to China despite protests from human rights groups in Japan that feared the man would be executed by the Chinese authorities. [ "Japon: extradition", Libération, 30 April 1990.] Students in Canada did not respond to the recent Chinese invitation to go back home because they fear that the continuous control of expression in China would affect them because they have been exposed to foreign ideas. [Charlotte Montgomery, "Students in Canada Rebuff Beijing's Offer", The Globe and Mail, 2 June 1990, p.D3.] in February 1987, a returned Chinese student who had just graduated from an American university was arrested for his suspected participation to student protests in Shanghai. [ Marvine Howe, "Ex-Graduate Students in U.S. is Among Detained Chinese", The New York Times, 2 February 1987.] A Chinese diplomat in Washington who recently defected to the United States revealed that China had developed a strategy to deny the right of return to Chinese abroad who had expressed anti-government feelings. [ Ibid.] No further corroborating on these articles is currently available to the IRBDC in Ottawa.