'I must get out into the free world', dissident who fled China on boat tells BBC

Image source, Dong Guangping Image caption, Dong Guangping has resettled in Canada, where his family is residing By Phoebe Kong BBC Chinese Published 2 hours ago As the rubber boat he was on rocked through choppy waves, fear washed over Chinese dissident Dong Guangping, who had gone without sleep for two days. The 68-year-old knew he was taking a huge risk trying to flee China by sea, but even then, he had underestimated the challenges of this journey. He was badly sunburned, his phone was running out of battery, and his portable charger had gone flat. Apart from the sky and the sea, there were no landmarks around him. He could only hope that the digital compass would get him to South Korea before his phone went flat. "Not being able to navigate would have been terrifying. I could have drifted back towards China," Dong told BBC Chinese nearly two months after his perilous escape. Forty hours after setting out from China's eastern Shandong province, Dong was rescued by the coast guard and fishermen in Korean waters on the night of 27 May. He was briefly detained in South Korea but has since resettled in Canada, where his family had been living. "I can never survive in China," said Dong, who spoke to BBC Chinese in a video call from Toronto. "If I didn't leave, I will never be at peace for the rest of my life. I had to show the Chinese Communist Party I was capable of leaving. They cannot stop me, they cannot control me." When asked for comment, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry told the BBC that the Chinese government "handles the entry and exit of its citizens in accordance with the law and that Chinese citizens must abide by the Constitution and the law". Image source, Dong Guangping Image caption, Dong travelled for more than 300km over 40 hours from Shandong, China, to South Korea Dong, a police officer-turned-human rights activist, has been jailed in China several times for his activism. In 1999, Dong was fired from the police force after 13 years because he signed a petition to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the brutal Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy protesters . Then in 2001, he was imprisoned for three years for "inciting subversion of state power". He was jailed again in 2014 for participating in another Tiananmen commemoration event, according to Amnesty International. Dong had fled China four times previously but was sent back each time. "But I have always held fast to one conviction: I must get out into the free world," he tells BBC Chinese. In September 2015, he travelled to Bangkok with his wife and daughter, where they were granted refugee status by the United Nations and approved for resettlement in Canada. But days before they were scheduled to leave for Canada, Thai authorities deported Dong to China , where he was jailed for "inciting subversion" and "crossing the national border illegally". He was sentenced to three and a half years in jail. When he was released in 2019, he tried again to escape, by swim