Number of Chinese seeking asylum abroad up fivefold in five years, UN figures show, as lawyers mark anniversary of crackdown on dissent
There were 57,705 asylum seekers registered as being from China last year. Five years ago, that number stood at just 10,617
The number of Chinese citizens seeking asylum abroad has increased almost fivefold in the last five years, latest United Nations figures show, a trend attributed by some experts to the mainland’s renewed crackdown on activists, human rights lawyers and political dissidents since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012.
Over the past 13 years, China has consistently ranked in the top 20 countries worldwide in terms of the number of refugees it produces, according to the UN refugee agency’s Global Trends report.
There were 57,705 asylum seekers registered from China last year. Five years ago, that number stood at just 10,617.
The number of people from China classed as refugees has also seen a steady increase, from 190,369 in 2011 to 212,911 last year.
Although China has by and large enjoyed political stability over the last two decades, “the deteriorating human rights situation is one factor and the deteriorating situation in areas populated by ethnic minorities has probably also played a contributing role”, says William Nee, China researcher at Amnesty International.
“It depends on what human rights we are talking about … but in many ways the human rights situation has gotten worse over the past few years. They have tightened up the censorship apparatus, increased controls on social media, and they have gone after those in the legal community who were willing to take on human rights cases ... It’s been a huge setback to China’s progress on human rights and promoting the rule of law.”
A year ago on Saturday, mainland authorities launched a nationwide sweep in which at least 248 human rights lawyers and activists, including Beijing legal professional Wang Yu, were rounded up. One year on, 17 of them remain in detention, and some, including Wang, face subversion charges.
The anniversary was marked on Saturday in Hong Kong with a protest outside the central government’s liaison office.
Overseas bar associations and lawyers groups, including the Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group and the Australian branch of the International Association of People’s Lawyers, issued an open letter on Saturday to President Xi calling for the release of all lawyers and others unlawfully detained.
In Canada, the Immigration and Refugee Board last year received 1,738 claims from people whose first country of persecution was China. Between January and March this year, Canada registered 391 new claims.
Claims filed in recent years relate to a range of issues including religion, ethnic minorities, land expropriation and family planning policies on the mainland.
A spokesperson for Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection said that last year 146 people identifying themselves as a Chinese national received a protection visa that enabled them to stay down under.
In 2014, the country that produced the highest number of successful asylum seekers in the United States was China, followed by Egypt, which has suffered from years of political instability and a declining security situation, and war-torn Syria, according to the US Department of Homeland Security.
And last year China remained “a significant origin of many asylum seekers in the US, with 15,100 claims”, the Global Trends report notes.
The same study shows that globally, forced displacement reached record-high numbers. By the end of 2015, more than 65 million individuals had been forcibly displaced as a result of persecution, conflict, generalised violence or human rights violations.
Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia produced half the world’s refugees in the year.
