A RISING star in the dissident movement has fled China and made his way safely to the West through Hong Kong.
Informed sources said yesterday that Wang Jiaqi, 34, who was detained by Beijing police in early March for helping organise a petition for labour rights, arrived in Hong Kong last Friday.
The sources said the dissident, a graduate student in the Law Faculty at Beijing University, was granted asylum by a Western country and left Hong Kong on Thursday.
Wang, a police officer for several years before his enrolment at Beijing University, escaped from a detention facility in his native Tangshan, a city in northern China where he was taken under heavy guard after his arrest.
Chinese sources said the Ministries of Public Security and State Security had been ordered by the leadership to conduct a nationwide investigation of his daring escape and to take remedial measures to plug the loopholes.
Sources in the dissident community said that although W ang joined the pro-democracy crusade after the June 4, 1989 massacre, he was deemed a rising star because of his leadership qualities.
Early this year, Wang reportedly formed a non-governmental labour organisation of 100 activists to press for such rights as freedom to strike.