U.S. Grants Political Asylum to Stowaway From China
Immigration officials have granted political asylum to a Chinese student protester who fled after the Tian An Men Square killings in Beijing last June and stowed away on a boat from Hong Kong to Oakland.
“I am very lucky,” said the student, identified by the pseudonym Mr. Zhang. “Many friends did not get political asylum.”
He said the Immigration and Naturalization Service district director approved his asylum request March 20.
Zhang had arrived in the United States 33 days earlier as a stowaway, and he was jailed for four days before being released on bond. His lawyers said he was a physics student at a Chinese university when he joined the pro-democracy movement in 1987.
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