Falun Gong Practitioner Blocked from Canadian Resettlement, at Risk of Deportation to China from Thailand
NEW YORK—Zhang Xinyan (張信燕), a Chinese Falun Gong practitioner and refugee recognized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), was stopped by Thai authorities just moments before she was to board a flight to Canada, where she had been granted resettlement. She is now detained in Bangkok and, according to those close to her case, at grave risk of being forcibly returned to China—the country whose persecution killed both of her parents and drove her into exile.
Zhang, 68, was born in Huazhou, Guangdong Province, and worked as an English teacher in Shenzhen before she began practicing Falun Gong in 1997. Her parents were also practitioners; both died as a result of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution.
When Zhang married in 2011, Shenzhen authorities revoked her travel permit because of her faith, refusing to let her reunite with her husband in Hong Kong; after a year of pressure, the marriage ended. In 2014, she fled China for Thailand, where UNHCR recognized her as a refugee in 2016 (UNHCR refugee certificate No. 815-14C02072).
On May 7, 2026, Thai immigration officers detained Zhang on allegations of overstaying her visa and working without authorization, and she was held at the Suan Phlu Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok. In the following months, Canada approved her for emergency resettlement and completed humanitarian processing, according to those close to her case. A commercial flight from Bangkok to Vancouver was booked for July 8. But just before departure, Thai authorities blocked her from boarding and returned her to detention, where she remains.
Zhang’s case recalls earlier incidents in which recognized refugees were returned from Thailand to China despite resettling arrangement. In 2015, two Chinese human rights activists, Dong Guangping and Jiang Yefei, were forcibly removed from Thailand to China before departing for Canada where they received resettlement.
Zhang has reportedly communicated by telephone that she fears an imminent forced return to China. Given her decades as a Falun Gong practitioner and the CCP’s ongoing persecution in China, there are strong grounds to believe she would face persecution if repatriated.
“Zhang Xinyan has already lost both of her parents to this persecution and saw her marriage destroyed simply because of her faith,” said Levi Browde, Executive Director of the Falun Dafa Information Center. “To send her back to China now would be to hand her to the very regime that shattered her family. Thailand must not allow itself to become an instrument of Beijing’s persecution.”
The Falun Dafa Information Center urges the U.S. Department of State, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), the Canadian government, and the United Nations to immediately press the Thai government to halt any deportation of Ms. Zhang and to permit her safe passage to Canada under the resettlement she has already been granted. We call on Thailand to honor its obligations under the principle of non-refoulement, and on UNHCR and Canadian officials to be granted immediate access to verify her safety and legal status.
