MONTREAL - The Montreal daughter of one of the founders of the overseas Chinese democracy movement has not given up hope that she will see him released from a Chinese jail where he languishes due to trumped-up terrorism and espionage charges.
Ti-Anna Wang, a soft-spoken teen, is putting her university studies off for a year as she tries to drum up support for her father Dr. Wang Bingzhang, who is into the seventh year of a life sentence.
The youngest of his four children, Ti-Anna Wang moved to Washington, D.C., shortly after graduating from Marianapolis College last fall, aiming to bring her father's story to light.
"It has been a big burden on my family and as much as they want to devote all their resources to it, they have other responsibilities," said Ti-Anna Wang, born in 1989 and named in commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
"I thought that maybe I could do something ... I felt like I was the one who had the least on their plate."
Wang Bingzhang came to Canada in 1979 and studied at McGill University before moving to New York in 1982, casting aside a promising career in medicine to pursue the Chinese democracy movement full-time.
While meeting with labour activists near the China / Vietnam border in 2002, Wang was beaten, blindfolded and taken across the border to China, where he was left at a Buddhist temple for Chinese authorities.
After six months of incommunicado detention and a one-day trial behind closed doors, Wang was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Ti-Anna Wang said her father's only goal now is to return to North America and see his mother, an 88-year-old Vancouver woman who is too old and frail to travel to China to visit her son.
"My father wants to see his mother, my grandmother, that's his only wish," Ti-Anna Wang said.
"He has already promised the prison officials that he wouldn't go back to do democracy work if he were let out.".
Ti-Anna Wang said American politicians have shown interest in her father's case and she wants to raise the same concern among Canadian politicians as she hopes to eventually bring her father back to Montreal with her.
Both the Canadian and U.S. governments have adopted bills in support of her father in the past and the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are among those that have voiced opposition to his imprisonment.
Ti-Anna Wang will have a chance to speak with MPs in early April when she visits Ottawa at the invitation of Liberal MP Irwin Cotler.
Cotler, who has been involved in a number of cases involving people jailed abroad, said a family's relentless intervention is key to a resolution in most cases.
"It doesn't matter what continent or what cause -- the family connection is very important," Cotler said.
The fact that Wang's mother and daughter are Canadians also gives his case a distinguishable Canadian connection and Canada should be involved in helping secure his release, Cotler said.
The respected human-rights lawyer added that it's in China's self-interest to allow Wang to be released.
"To keep him in prison at this point is a form a torture and there is no reason for that," Cotler said.
"If China wants to demonstrate that it is a respected superpower in the 21st century, then superpowers should not behave in an inhumane fashion."
Ti-Anna Wang said the last time she saw her father was during a 30-minute visit last November.
"The visits themselves last only half an hour and they take place in visitation booths so we're not in the same room.
"We're separated by bars and two panels of Plexiglas and we speak on a phone," said Ti-Anna Wang, adding that her father is housed in a remote prison and allowed just one visitor each month.
The conversations, which must be in Chinese, are monitored.
Ti-Anna Wang had hoped that pressure in the build-up to the Summer Games in Beijing would help her father's case and perhaps even result in his release but that wasn't the case.
"His spirits are very, very low," Ti-Anna Wang said.
"He's being kept largely in solitary confinement so the heaviest toll is on his mental health. When we see him he appears to be anxious and is clearly depressed."
Wang, now 61, is in poor health which has deteriorated in recent years and he is suffering from a plethora of health problems and untreated depression.
Initiatives for China, a U.S.-based organization dedicated to advancing a peaceful transition to democracy in China, has been helping Ti-Anna Wang in the United States.
Jim Geheran, the organization's Washington-based director, said it's been impressive to watch Ti-Anna mature rapidly.
"She was very tentative and understandably kind of shy about going out there and knocking on doors," Geheran said.
"It's really wonderful now to see her taking the initiative and lining up appointments and meeting with senators and congressmen and really doing a great job pushing her father's agenda."
Geheran said he's hopeful that Wang will be released on humanitarian grounds, but compared the current situation to a "Texas stand-off"with the Chinese government.
"The Chinese government will never release him in a manner that will any way reflect badly on them," Geheran said.
"I think if there is consistent pressure done through the right diplomatic channels and people do respond to the human side of this story, the Chinese government may come to the realization that keeping him in jail is more trouble than it's worth."
