|
Another Kind of Orient Express |
|
|
|
Written by Mark O'Neill
|
|
Wednesday, 10 June 2009 |
|
Page 1 of 2  New details emerge of an underground railroad that rescued hundreds of Tiananmen fugitives
Two decades after the chaos that enveloped Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989, the story is finally becoming known of a heroic underground movement that rescued 300 intellectuals, student activists and supporters of the June 4 protest movement.
With extensive assistance from the British colonial government, a secret network called "Operation Yellow Bird," after a Chinese proverb in which a bird rescues an insect being eaten buy a grasshopper, smuggled the dissidents out of China to Hong Kong and the west.
One of them was Chen Yizi, an adviser to the late disgraced party chief Zhao Ziyang, who fled from Beijing to Hainan island in the far south of China where he hid in the house of a doctor. Two members of the underground network put him in the sweltering hold of a 7,000-ton freighter, which went to a port in the Pearl River Delta, where a motorboat brought him to Hong Kong.
Most of the Yellow Bird operations have been kept secret to protect those involved, especially those still in the mainland. But two decades after the bloody crackdown, more information has come to light as those involved tell their story.
The network was organised by a small number of activists in Hong Kong who sent agents to the mainland to help the fugitives escape, with the aid of sympathisers who gave them temporary refuge at the risk of arrest and imprisonment.
The average cost of an escape was HK$50,000-100,000, paid to the snakeheads who brought the fugitives to Hong Kong -- more than double the normal price to smuggle someone out, because of the additional risk. The more famous the person, the higher the price. The funds came from money raised from Hong Kong people during the weeks of the protest prior to June 4.
The network operated with the active connivance of the colonial government, which waived normal immigration rules to facilitate the entry of the fugitives and their escape to third countries in the west.
One of the main organizers was Chen Da-zheng, a Hong Kong businessman, who said that, between June and December 1989, he helped 133 people escape, using thousands of dollars of his own money. He ended 20 years of silence in a long interview in the latest issue of the Chinese-language Yazhou Zhoukan.
<< Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
•
Some international organizations urge foreign...
