Time for the Yellow Bird of Hong Kong to fly

Exclusive: Activists who helped Chinese political fugitives are planning their own escape, writes Stephen Vines

Operation Yellow Bird, the highly successful “underground railway” which has been smuggling dissidents out of China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, is to close down. Many of those involved will be fleeing Hong Kong ahead of the Chinese takeover on 1 July.

The Hong Kong-based operation, which worked with Triad criminal gangs to smuggle the dissidents across the border, is believed to have helped more than 150 people to escape.

They include some of the democracy leaders at the top of China's "Most Wanted" list, such as the student activists Wu'er Kaixi, Chai Ling and Li Lu as well as Yan Jaiqi, former adviser to the deposed Communist leader Zhao Ziyang. The network also smuggled out the pro-democracy businessman Wan Runnan, whose Stone Corporation was once hailed as China's version of Apple Computer.

Yellow Bird's last major coup was the escape last October of Wang Xizhe, a factory worker and veteran dissident who is seen as a formidable opponent of the Chinese regime because of his proletarian credentials.

Formed shortly after Tiananmen, Yellow Bird received considerable financial backing from businessmen and showbusiness personalities. Many ordinary people and even public officials in China co-operated with the network in its early days, while diplomats in Hong Kong helped the dissidents secure visas for rapid passage out of the colony.

Now sources close to Yellow Bird say they fear reprisals. Although membership of the loose network is secret, it is feared that Chinese intelligence knows who they are. Some have been told directly or indirectly that they are on a blacklist, which means they are denied entry to China. Some have even been told by Chinese officials that they should leave the colony before the takeover.

Also anxious to go are the remaining 30 or so Chinese dissidents, out of some 800 who were smuggled into Hong Kong. The unofficial trade union leader, Han Dongfang, the most prominent dissident still in the colony, advises his colleagues to get out as soon as possible. Mr Han insists that he himself will remain, saying that the worst the Chinese can do is return him to jail. He left China legally for medical treament in the West; having made several unsuccessful attempts to get back into China, he is now waiting for China to come to him.

The Yellow Bird operation was forced to enlist Triad co-operation because so-called Triad "snakeheads" had an established people-smuggling operation. Some Triads were swept up in the fervour of support for the democracy movement and offered free assistance, but one report says that more than pounds 1m was paid to others.

The smuggling of dissidents brought the Triads and the Yellow Bird activists into a strange alliance with diplomats who, with the complicity of the Hong Kong authorities, turned a blind eye to the manner of entry to the colony and assisted in the dissidents' swift exit. One French diplomat went well beyond his government's instructions to help the dissidents and somehow managed to get his actions retrospectively endorsed in Paris.

The British authorities feared there would be an explosive reaction from Peking if China learnt of the assistance given to the dissidents in Hong Kong, and the Political Adviser's office, containing diplomats seconded from the Foreign Office, worked constantly at Kai Tak airport to ensure that the dissidents got out with a minimum of scrutiny from Hong Kong immigration officials or the press. A co-ordination committee of diplomats and Hong Kong officials was established to ensure that the dissidents left without going through the usual bureaucratic channels.

The fallout from this alliance is shrouded in controversy. Rumours persist that the sudden resignation of Hong Kong's director of immigration, Lawrence Leung, was linked to illegal immigration activities emanating from contacts formed during the Yellow Bird period. The same appears to apply to Jerry Stuchiner, head of the US Consulate's immigration service in Hong Kong from 1989 to 1994, who was jailed after being arrested here last year in possession of fake Honduran passports to be sold to Chinese. He had been closely involved in helping Yellow Bird fugitives flee to the US.

Apart from the connivance of sympathetic Chinese officials, Yellow Bird's high rate of success appears to owe something to inertia in the government, which can find it more convenient to let dissidents leave the country than have them remain to cause trouble.

British officials discreetly asked their Chinese counterparts if Peking would be prepared to show a similar degree of tolerance towards Hong Kong people who took part in Yellow Bird. The response was non-committal, which was enough to make Yellow Bird participants shut down their operation and plan their own escapes.