A SENIOR mainland judge who fled to Hong Kong earlier this year and who has been granted asylum in the United States managed to slip his 12-year-old son out of China before leaving the territory with him this month. Zhang Xin, 39, a former judge in the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court, flew out of Kai Tak airport to Los Angeles on August 13 after being helped to start a new life in the US by the Yellow Bird underground dissident movement. When the Sunday Morning Post interviewed Mr Zhang in Wan Chai in May after he slipped into Hong Kong from China, he said one of his major concerns was to try to get his son, Zhang Gong, away from his estranged wife and to join him. ''He has his son with him,'' one of the original Yellow Bird organisers said yesterday. ''I do not know any of the details but they are in Los Angeles.'' The activist said he helped set Mr Zhang up with a ''sponsor'' in the US and with somewhere to live in Los Angeles after he decided that was where he wanted to live. ''He has no friends or relations there,'' the activist said. ''But we asked him where he wanted to go and he said Los Angeles.'' Mr Zhang's troubles began in 1990. He was in the process of seeking a divorce from his wife when he discovered she was having an affair with the chief of the court where he worked. He said he was put under ''house arrest'' on a number of occasions in a court building after he caught the pair together, causing his boss to lose face. Then Mr Zhang, who eventually divorced his wife, launched a nationwide letter campaign to expose rampant corruption he had uncovered in the courts. He wrote 300 letters to senior government officials and complained in person as he tried to have his corrupt colleagues and bosses exposed, but it backfired on him. In April last year he was grabbed by Public Security Bureau officers at his home in Shenzhen and taken to the Shenzhen Labour Education Centre on Shang Bu Bei Road, where he was held for seven months before escaping. He claimed he was beaten and punched when he first arrived and witnessed other acts of unprovoked violence against inmates by prison guards. The judge said he also witnessed young inmates making rice noodles for export to the US under the brand name ''Tower'', and took photographs and kept daily notes in his diary. Mr Zhang said the hygiene conditions were ''dreadful''. While on the run Mr Zhang, who is originally from Heilongjiang, in northeast China, found out that his son, Zhang Gong, was being sought by Public Security Bureau officers. ''I found that my ex-wife had sent my son back to Heilongjiang,'' he said. ''Every time I tried to ring my son I found that the phone was bugged or had been cut by the Government.'' He said that when he eventually made contact with his son, he sent him to stay with relatives while he remained in hiding. Mr Zhang then decided he had to leave China. The judge said he felt he had no choice but to escape, otherwise he would be caught and jailed again, and that he had been branded an outcast and had no career in China after the threats made against him. Earlier this year, Mr Zhang slipped into Hong Kong using a false name during part of a seven-day package tour of the territory.
