Thai authorities facilitate Chinese activist's departure to Canada

A Chinese activist detained in Thailand has arrived in Canada, a month after police prevented her boarding a flight from Bangkok to Vancouver, according to supporters. Sheng Xue, a Toronto-based activist who first drew attention to the case, said the flight finally went ahead on Monday, posting a picture online of Zhang Xinyan at Vancouver International Airport with supporters. Ms Zhang, a 55-year-old Chinese national, is one of several Hong Kong democracy campaigners living in exile abroad. She first moved to Thailand in 2014 to escape persecution based on her participation in Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China. On May 7 this year she was arrested in Bangkok for overstaying her visa and taken to the Suan Phlu immigration detention centre in Bangkok. Supporters expressed concern that she would be deported. Ms Sheng subsequently set in motion efforts to resettle Ms Zhang, who already held UN-approved refugee status. Canadian officials investigated the case and approved the resettlement application. The Canadian embassy in Thailand booked a flight from Bangkok to Vancouver on July 8, but Ms Zhang was not allowed to board and was taken back to the detention centre. Ms Zhang, also known as Lily Zhang, is among 19 activists based overseas who are the subject of arrest warrants issued by Hong Kong police in July 2025 for subversion under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law. “Bounties” for their capture ranged from HK$200,000 to HK$1 million. If Ms Zhang had been sent back to Hong Kong, she would have become the first person charged under the national security law to be deported and imprisoned. Pressure from Ottawa and the UN refugee agency, as well as an intervention by Thai lawmakers and international human rights groups, eventually resulted in Ms Zhang being allowed to leave Thailand, Ms Sheng said. “Once Thai authorities recognised Canada’s uncompromising stance, they abandoned their resistance and pivoted to ensuring her safe departure by all available means,” she wrote in an email to the Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto. “On the night before her flight, alongside Canadian diplomats who accompanied her, senior Thai police officers personally escorted Ms Zhang. Under direct orders from senior commanders and with dedicated drivers, they safely escorted her all the way to [Suvarnabhumi Airport] to board her flight to Canada.” Around the same time Ms Zhang was initially prevented from flying to Canada, Thai authorities also detained Chinese journalist Bai Zhaodong. He is now in immigration detention and China has requested his extradition, accusing him of extortion and bribery. In this case of Ms Zhang, efforts by the Chinese Communist Party had failed, said Ms Sheng. She described the activist’s arrival in Vancouver as a “major defeat for the CCP’s long-arm jurisdiction, diplomatic coercion and transnational repression in Southeast Asia and beyond”.