A Chinese woman told The Associated Press (AP) that she was abducted at a Dubai hotel by Chinese officials and taken to a secret jail with two other Uyghurs because her fiancé is a Chinese dissident.
Wu Huan, 26, told the AP she fled to Dubai to avoid being extradited to China since her fiancé, 19-year-old Wang Jingyu, was a Chinese dissident. Huan, who is not a Uyghur, alleges Chinese authorities kidnapped her at a hotel in Dubai and took her to a secret “black site” jail, where authorities allegedly held captive two Uyghurs, according to the AP.
Huan told the AP that Chinese officials questioned her at her Dubai hotel on May 27 before having Dubai police transport her to a police station where she was held for three days. Li Xuhang visited Huan on the third day and informed her that he worked for the Chinese consulate, the AP reported. Xuhang asked Huan if she had taken money from foreign actors to act against the communist nation, however, Huan denied the allegations, according to the report.
Huan then alleges Xuhang took her from the jail — handcuffed — into a vehicle with other Chinese people and was transported to a compound-like area where she was placed in a holding cell, according to the AP.
While “black sites” are common in China, Wu Huan’s account is the only testimony known to experts that Beijing has set one up in another country. https://t.co/1yTZQ6E7x4
— Yahoo Singapore (@YahooSG) August 16, 2021
Huan alleges masked Chinese officials threatened her and forced her to sign several documents that incriminated her fiancé, the AP reported. She was released on June 8 and reunited with Jingyu, and they are currently seeking asylum in the Netherlands, according to the AP.
Jingyu allegedly posted messages challenging the state-run media coverage of the 2019 Hong Kong protests and the China-Indian border clashes, according to the AP. (RELATED: ‘Worse Than Hell’: A Look Inside The Expansion Of China’s Mass Internment Camps)
China’s Foreign Ministry has denied Huan’s claims. “What I can tell you is that the situation the person talked about is not true,” Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying said Monday, according to the AP.
So-called “black sites” have been found inside China, however, a “black site” outside of the country is unusual, assistant professor at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica Yu-Jie Chen said, according to the AP. “[China] really wasn’t interested in reaching out until recent years,” Chen reportedly said. “This trend is increasingly robust.”
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report in 2009 detailing how Chinese government officials abduct people in Chinese cities who petition the government for a series of government abuses such as land grabs, torture and corruption. Those who challenge the government are then routinely abducted and sent to the facilities for days where they are deprived of their belongings and contact with the outside world, according to the HRW.