Chinese artist Hua Chung, who arrived in Canada, is in quarantine at his hotel and will file a refugee claim. Courtesy of Hua Chung
Chinese dissident artist Hua Chung arrived in Canada last week and is currently living in a hotel in isolation, where he will apply for refugee status. Hua said he was intimidated and oppressed in China and Thailand, and eventually had to go to a Western democracy. He said that when he arrived in Canada, he realized that there is a government that treats people as “human beings” and lamented the lack of voice and respect for the hundreds of millions of people at the lower end of the Chinese population.
Hua Chung, who has been speaking out for China’s low-end population, went into exile in Thailand in September 2019. His passport was about to expire because the Chinese embassy in Bangkok refused to issue him a new one, so he had no choice but to leave Thailand on April 1, tossed through Kadar and France, and finally landed in Canada on April 5. According to the rules of the New Crown epidemic, he had to stay in a quarantine hotel for 14 days. He could not disclose his current city because of the epidemic prevention requirements, but stressed that he arrived in Canada without the help of Chinese civil society organizations or individuals, and not through the arrangement of the UNHCR. He has already submitted a verbal application for refugee status to the Canadian authorities and is preparing the documents. Hua said that from the moment he set foot on Canadian soil, he truly felt like a human being. For example, the police would ask for his consent even if he wanted to enter a segregated hotel, not to mention that the Red Cross would hush him every day.
“I was particularly moved when the police asked us to sign this agreement to be quarantined, and I felt that he treated you as a person, not like China, where you have to accept unconditionally whatever the government decides. The Red Cross, on the other hand, goes to great lengths to ask you, for example, how your food is, and yesterday told us the good news that if you want to apply for refugee status, they help us find a legal aid agency that doesn’t require payment.”
Hua Chung has always used a critical perspective to examine the problems of Chinese society, and became a thorn in the side of the Chinese authorities in 2017 when he began to receive widespread reactions to his photographs of the forced eviction of low-end people from Beijing, and in September 2019 he went into exile in Thailand and continued to focus on Chinese social issues, launching the “No Cooperation, No Work, No Loan Repayment” campaign there. He was threatened and intimidated by the Chinese Communist Party for initiating the “Three No’s” campaign to hold the Chinese authorities responsible for the new epidemic. Since coming to Canada, he says he feels safer, and even though he has heard that there are Chinese United Front forces in Canada, he is not afraid and will speak out more vigorously for China’s low-end population and democratic freedoms.
“I feel very relaxed in Canada, little red powder I can give him the phone and I can say aren’t you threatening to kill me? I was daring to call out to the little red powder. The more open and frank the country, in fact, he does not dare, but in Thailand we do not dare, after all, like the boss of Causeway Bay have been arrested. I just hope that people who have a sense of resistance will dare to stand up in a democratic country.”
Pessimistic about China under Xi Jinping’s rule, Hua Chung fears that China may even go the way of North Korea and enter a state of lockdown. He said that in addition to the ongoing resistance of the people inside China, the Chinese overseas will have to keep showing solidarity in order to gather more positive forces.
“There is a possibility that they will close the country, and if it is going to that state, all 1.4 billion people in China will become meat tickets, slaves, so I hope that people who are awakened and don’t want to be buried with the Communist Party will come out or come out and escape and then wait for the right time. I still hope that one day China will become a free and democratic country like Taiwan, then I am definitely still willing to go back to China to live.”
The situation in China and Thailand is described as upheaval, so never been able to talk to his family at ease to get together, instead, during the isolation period in Canada, Hua Chung was able to video with his mother and daughter every day, soothing his soul, his family was happy to learn that he was safe, but always regretted that he was not a good son, a good father.
“In two months my mother will have her 80th birthday, but I can’t go back to kowtow to her, and whenever I think of this, I cry secretly when I’m alone.”
Hua Chung said he is grateful to Canada and attached and cherished to China, so he plans to settle down in Canada as soon as possible and pay back this new country on his own, and grow himself before he can give more help to China.
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