Canadian Detained During Beijing Airport Transit

A Canadian woman whose father is a dissident jailed on the mainland was briefly detained and “bullied” by security agents while transiting through Beijing’s main airport on Wednesday, the Toronto-based Globe and Mail newspaper said.

Ti-Anna Wang was pulled off a plane by six police officers, separated from her husband and detained with her daughter for almost two hours while connecting in Beijing en route to Toronto from Seoul, the paper said.

“It was a shocking, terrifying and senseless ordeal with no purpose but to bully, punish and intimidate me and my family,” Wang was quoted as saying in an email to Irwin Cotler, head of the Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.

Ties between China and Canada have been strained since the December arrest in Vancouver of a senior Huawei executive on a US arrest warrant, which was followed by detention of two Canadians on the mainland on suspicion of endangering state security.

The Globe and Mail said Wang was denied use of her phone and computer, and not allowed to contact the Canadian embassy.

Chinese officials told her she was not allowed to return to Canada and put her on a flight back to South Korea, it added.

The report also said the officials did not tell her why she is not allowed to return back to Canada.

Wang’s father, Wang Bingzhang, is a pro-democracy activist abducted in Vietnam in 2002 by Chinese agents before being imprisoned for life in China on charges of espionage and terrorism, the rights group Human Rights in China has said.

The Globe and Mail said Ti-Anna Wang was barred from entering China last week when she arrived at Hangzhou airport, despite having obtained a visa in August to visit her ailing jailed father. (Reuters)