Three years of extreme anti-COVID lockdown measures have resulted in many Chinese wanting to escape China, where they say there is little hope.
Some have made it abroad successfully, while others are seeking opportunities. Despite the danger and an uncertain future, they share the same belief: Free air is worth it.
“I had to escape no matter what,” Chen Ping (pseudonym) told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times at the Belgrade international airport, Serbia, on March 25.
Chen, in her sixties, is from Shenyang, an industrial city in northeast China.
Chen’s mobile phone has no internet service, so she uses the Wi-Fi network at the airport where she is also staying.
“The floor is cold, but I am okay with it,” she said.
She has paid an agent she has never met to help her leave China. Her only contact with him was via phone, and she didn’t want to share too many details, including where she was going next, due to security concerns.
Chen does not speak English and had never taken a plane before, but she left China in early March without hesitation.
Her first stop was Hong Kong. Without much money, she slept on the plastic bench at the airport for eight days before flying to Serbia.
Before she left China, she told her son that her only chance to survive was to leave the country.
Chen and her husband have been subject to retaliation from the local authorities since 2002 after they defended the rights of the entire village by exposing a former village Chinese Communist Party secretary who had embezzled large amounts of peasants’ money.
For years, the couple petitioned in Beijing despite being imprisoned, beaten, and sent to labor camps on several occasions, including the notorious Masanjia forced labor camp. As part of this, Chen was also sentenced to two years of forced labor in 2011 for her insistence on petitioning.
Her refusal to plead guilty in this instance led to the doubling of her slave labor quota at the labor camp, and she endured frequent beatings and torture for failing to meet the quota.
She said that the prisoners were allowed restroom breaks just twice a day. Chen developed heart disease, high blood pressure, and nephritis from the pressure and the torture during the imprisonment.
Now in a Serbian airport, with an unknown future ahead of her, Chen says she is determined to leave China no matter the difficulty.
For Freedom’s Sake
Roy (pseudonym) became subject to the regime’s surveillance after he visited Shanghai’s Urumqi Middle Road on Nov. 27, 2022, when crowds gathered to protest lockdowns that resulted in at least 14 people being killed in an apartment fire in China’s northwest Xinjiang region.As a young man, he wanted to take pictures of the event, but plain-clothed police abducted him and took him to a police station, where he was interrogated and beaten. The police confiscated his cell phone and warned him not to join other similar events.
Since then, the police have called him occasionally to have him report to them.
“I am really worried,” he told The Epoch Times on March 24.
Both his grandparents died at the end of 2022 during the pandemic.
The thought of getting out of China has intensified following the lockdowns and the White Paper Movement.
He’s been aware of the Internet blockade since 6th grade when family members guided him on bypassing the firewall to learn information outside China, he explained.
Many of his online comments have been considered sensitive and inappropriate by the regime, and he has had his social media accounts blocked.
A visit to the United States as a college student inspired him in his quest for freedom and democracy.
He knew about an escape route through the Panamanian rainforest but hesitated due to the risks involved.
But to start over in a strange place is all he could do, he said, if he wants to live in a free society.
Doctor’s Awakening
Antao (pseudonym) is a doctor in the northeastern Liaoning Province.During the pandemic, his hospital was overrun with infected patients, he said on March 22, adding that many medical staff were also infected.
Like other hospitals, they ran out of medicine, Antao said.
“The hospital even ran out of the most basic masks and alcohol,” he said, blaming the shortages on the ruling communist regime.
He had planned to flee China for the United States with a friend at the end of 2022, but his worry over his 80-year-old mother and her poor health had him stay. Now his friend is already working and leading a normal life in America.
“Life is worth nothing in China,” he said, reflecting on what he saw during the three years of the pandemic.
“I will not give up on leaving China,” he said.
