Dissident Wu'er Kaixi tries to return to China via Macau

Jun 3, 2009, 12:36 GMT

   Taipei - Taiwan-based Chinese dissident Wu'er Kaixi, in his latest move to return to China, flew to Macau Wednesday and turned himself in to police there.

   Wu'er Kaixi, 41, was being temporarily held by immigration officers in the special administrative zone of China, pending deportation back to Taipei.

   'They are bringing dinner to me and will probably deport me to Taiwan later,' he said via his cell phone in an interview with the German Press Agency dpa.

   Wu'er Kaixi picked June 3, the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Chinese government's deadly crackdown on a democracy movement in Beijing, to try to return to the Chinese capital in defiance of China's ban on the return of the exiled student leaders of the 1989 protests.

   'The ultimate goal is to ask them to send me to China,' he said of his trip to Macau.

   However, Taiwan's Central News Agency said Wu'er Kaixi refused to board the plane when Macau immigration officers tried to deport him.

   Wu'er Kaixi was one of the student leaders on a hunger strike on Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989. After the military crackdown, he escaped to the United States, attended Harvard University, married a Taiwan student and moved to Taiwan several years ago.

   He is now the Taiwan manager of an international financial investment company in Taipei.

   In the run-up to Thursday's 20th anniversary, China has barred several exiled Chinese dissidents from entering China or Hong Kong.