The Chinese dissident stood in front of a map of Vietnam, looking for the best place to sneak across the border on his long quest for freedom.
“I want to try,” said the bespectacled former physics student, who is in his late 30s. “I know it’s very difficult but I cannot go back to China.”
Without a passport Wang Weimin, whose name AFP has changed to protect him and his family, had already made it over the Chinese frontier and reached the Vietnamese capital Hanoi.
But once there, hungry and short of cash, Wang found that neither foreign embassies nor the United Nations refugee agency could accept his request for political asylum.
In June he decided there was no choice but to push on towards Thailand, “a free country”.
“See you later,” Wang said, smiling as he gave a slight wave to an AFP reporter. He walked off with determination, carrying a cloth bag containing two handwritten books which he said he penned in prison.
