After Perilous Escape From China, Alien Pleads for Asylum in U.S.

Li Chenwang had fled across the interior of China on freight train, bus and foot. He had dodged bullets as he ran across the Chinese border. And he had escaped the gunfire of a jungle war in Burma.

His long journey ended in the United States--where he was immediately arrested. “I cried,” Li said in a recent interview. “I was scared to death. Never in my life have I been arrested.”

Li is being held without bond in an Immigration and Naturalization Service detention facility in downtown Seattle. He was arrested June 23 trying to enter the United States with a fake Singapore passport. Li asked that his real name, hometown and occupation not be disclosed to protect his family in China.

In an interview at the detention facility, Li explained why he and his family had been willing to pay smugglers $25,000 to help him flee what he called the repression of his homeland.

The father of three children and owner of a business in a Fujian province seaport town, Li said he spoke out at two rallies last May in support of pro-democracy students demonstrating in Beijing.

Shortly afterward, Li said, he discovered that his name had been placed on a police list as the leader of the town’s pro-democracy movement. Fearing arrest, he and four activists in the town decided to sneak out of the country.

Although their town is near Taiwan and Hong Kong--two well-traveled smuggling destinations--Li said he and his friends decided to journey all the way across the interior of China, to what they thought would be the less-patrolled Chinese border with Burma. (Burma’s name was changed to Myanmar in June.)

Traveling 1,600 miles by jumping freight trains and traveling back roads by bus, truck, Jeep and on foot, Li said he and his friends left the country just as government troops were opening fire on the students in Beijing. In Burma, the refugees negotiated their way through dense jungle to the Thailand border. Li remembers hearing bursts of gunfire as the trio threaded their way past rival armies in Burma’s then-raging civil war.

They made their way to Bangkok, where they separated. One decided to go to Hong Kong. Another headed for Canada. Li, who has family in New York City, opted for the United States.

Hiring smugglers for $25,000--$15,000 down and $10,000 to be paid by his New York cousin upon delivery--Li said he was photographed for travel documents and assigned an escort to accompany him on the long flight from Bangkok to Seattle.

Li said he didn’t see the documents until the flight descended into Seattle-Tacoma International Arport and his escort thrust a visa into his hands. Immigration officials did not believe Li’s story that he was a businessman from Singapore and held him.