The most famous asylum seeker from China today, Baolige Wurina, is again facing potential denial of his asylum request, deportation to China, and certain persecution. Sweden, otherwise known as a safe haven for the persecuted, risks ruining its reputation due to its sheer ignorance of communist China.
The case got the attention of Swedish and international media. Considering Baolige’s deteriorating situation in his home region—China’s increasingly restive Inner Mongolia region—and Sweden’s normally generous refugee policy, it is, even to this Swedish writer, baffling why the country’s immigration board seems so set on having him sent back.
Baolige, an ethnic Mongolian, has not been hiding on the sidelines. He has spent years partaking in demonstrations right outside the Chinese Embassy in Stockholm and holding public speeches. He has not only highlighted the growing plight of ethnic Mongolians in Inner Mongolia, but also supported groups of persecuted ethnic minorities, the Tibetans and the Uyghurs.
All this is happening as the number of Chinese asylum seekers continues to grow significantly. Since Xi Jinping came to power, the number of asylum seekers has shot up from just over 10,000 in 2013 to about 120,000 in 2021. In fact, in 2021 alone, despite COVID-19 restrictions that almost certainly affected people’s ability to seek asylum, there were about as many Chinese asylum seekers as during Hu Jintao’s entire 10-year reign. There is no indication this year-by-year growth will stop anytime soon.
Sweden’s immigration board in 2019 already decided that Baolige is to be denied asylum. Yet as a result of widespread media coverage—partly due to his own work and his own case—about the suppression of ethnic Mongolians in Inner Mongolia that started appearing in headlines in 2020, the government had to halt his actual deportation. Then, he was granted a new hearing.
With some certainty, should Baolige be denied asylum and be deported, he will face persecution. If so, Sweden, normally a paragon of following international law, would have violated the non-refoulment principle of not sending anyone back if he/she would likely face torture or ill-treatment upon return.
Baolige’s time is now running out, as his hearing is moving closer, and the immigration board is seemingly on the fence about the situation in Inner Mongolia—but more importantly, about the risk of persecution for those who are returned after raising attention to the Chinese regime’s human rights abuses.
The fact that his case has led numerous media around the world—including Newsweek, The Economist, and almost every major media in Sweden—to raise these issues should be more than enough to grant the man asylum and ensure his safety. That his case had led to the issue being raised in the Swedish parliament only strengthens the likelihood that he will face persecution if returned. The punishment for what he has done would be severe enough, but that he belongs to an ethnic minority whose language and culture the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is seeking to eradicate, just as with Uyghurs in Xinjiang and Tibetans, only makes his situation worse.
A key point for the immigration board—at least from what one can glimpse as an outsider—is whether China is aware of Baolige, and, therefore, at risk of such repercussions if returned.
Unfortunately, Sweden’s immigration board seems unaware of the great length that the CCP goes to control and monitor the Chinese diaspora abroad. The CCP’s work, via its United Front Work Department, seeks to control groups abroad, and insert itself into Chinese students’ lives at foreign universities—and attempts (rather successfully) to co-opt Chinese language media abroad should make this clear. So should the extreme extent that local police try to control their local diaspora abroad, whether via establishing informal police “service stations” around the world, or bragging about how they have “persuaded” some 230,000 people to return in a matter of just 15 or 16 months.
Sweden is of particular interest in this respect, too. Any action by Swedish media or local activists, like myself, to raise issues tend to draw immediate counter-responses from the embassy in Stockholm. The fact that Sweden has not one, but two, convicted refugee spies—one who targeted the tiny Uyghur diaspora and another who targeted the small Tibetan diaspora—speaks volumes (refugee spies rarely face trial).
That the Chinese Embassy in Stockholm is unaware of Baolige, and his work, is unthinkable; the same goes for the local police in his hometown, for that matter. After all, you don’t push an issue that the government seeks to conceal from the international community without getting noticed, not when it comes to the Chinese regime and its ever-growing attention to controlling and monitoring Chinese nationals abroad.
The decision for the Swedish immigrant board should be simple: to secure Baolige’s future with his wife and two young children, and go a long way to create a safe haven for other ethnic Mongolians fleeing China.
