Chinese dissident living in legal limbo in Japanese airport
For a man in such an extraordinary situation, Feng Zhenghu looks remarkably clean, well rested and sane. His hair is tousled but clean, his chin is freshly shaved, and, despite six weeks without a shower or laundry facilities, no unpleasant odours linger about him. But the stink caused by Mr Feng is a political one, a struggle against Asia’s most powerful nation by a lonely individual in the sterile no man’s land of an international airport.
Since early last month, Mr Feng has been in legal limbo, living on a narrow bench between the boarding gates and immigration desks of Tokyo’s Narita airport. His bathroom is the nearby public lavatory, his food consists of biscuits and vitamin pills donated by passing travellers, and his only contact with the outside world is through a mobile phone and small laptop computer.
His story sounds like the Steven Spielberg film The Terminal, starring Tom Hanks – except that, far from being a hapless victim of circumstances, 55-year old Mr Feng has chosen to stay here as a protest against the Chinese Government and the rest of the world’s tolerance of it. “My life at the moment is suffering,” he told The Times yesterday. “But I’m not doing this just for me. I’m fighting the Government for the sake of human rights in China, and I never feel lonely here because so many people are supporting me.”
Mr Feng is a dissident, an economist and self-taught lawyer who made a name for himself in his native Shanghai as an adviser and advocate of China’s increasing army of “petitioners” – ordinary people taking on the central and local governments for a range of alleged injustices.
For 20 years he was regularly arrested, questioned and harassed, and convicted of “subversion” and “illegal business practices”, serving three years in jail. Earlier this year he was held for weeks without charge and without access to his family or lawyers. In April, after his release, he decided to go and spend a few weeks with his sister in Japan while things cooled off.
He flew back in July, only to be bundled back on the plane at Shanghai airport. The same thing happened twice more; four times the airline refused to allow him to board. The last time, on November 4, he was prepared; after being manhandled back on to his plane at Shanghai and landing at Narita, he sat down on a bench in front of the immigration counters – and there he has been ever since.
For three days he lived off tap water, because the airport staff refused to give him food. Since he is technically not “in” Japan, never having passed passport control, no one from the real world is allowed access to the area where he lives – except arriving passengers, queuing up to have their own passports stamped. He has become a familiar figure to the air crews, who are particularly generous – he speaks gratefully of the two pieces of sushi donated by a stewardess from Taiwan, virtually the only fresh food he has had in 43 days.
Every few days he is presented with a stern letter, urging him to go through the formalities, signed by the airport immigration office. The authorities claim that, legally, there is nothing they can do – since Mr Feng is not in Japan and does not wish to enter. Privately, the Narita staff say that they never expected Mr Feng to endure for so long, that they sympathise with him and wish that they could do more to help.
They are happy to escort journalists to meet him by a deserted travellator – as The Times took its leave of Mr Feng an airport employee handed him his neatly printed interview schedule for the next few days. But the new Japanese Government has set a priority on improving relations with China – the visiting Vice-President, Xi Jinping, had an audience with Emperor Akihito on Monday. Evidently a high-level decision has been made – neither to risk the bad publicity attendant on manhandling an idealistic dissident nor to upset the Chinese Government by doing anything to encourage Mr Feng.
How it will all end is unclear, for Mr Feng himself shows no signs of flagging. What makes his situation bearable are his phone and his computer internet connection. His blogs and Twitter postings, describing his plight, have drawn responses form round the world – he receives 1,500 e-mails a day and 20 phone calls. “Life in prison is better than this, because you have fresh food, and direct sunlight and a proper place to sleep,” he says. “Here I have none of that. But I have my mobile and I have the internet. They are my freedom.”
In transit
Mehran Karimi Nasseri lived in Charles de Gaulle airport from 1988 to 2006 after being expelled from Iran without a passport
Sanjay Shah spent 13 months living in Nairobi airport after giving up his Kenyan passport
A woman living in a Honduran airport for a month baffled officials who found no record of her entering the country on any airline
Sources: Times research; BBC
