Why India cancelled Chinese dissidents' visas
In the course of one week, three well known Chinese dissident voices have had their plans of travelling to India cancelled, when they didn't get visas to attend an April 28 meeting of prominent Chinese exiles in Dharamsala. The meeting was hosted by the US-based "Initiatives for China", which has in the past brought together Chinese exiles, dissidents and ethnic minorities to discuss promoting democracy in China.
The group has earlier held meetings in the US and Taiwan, but never in India. That India was allowing a group, which says its mission is “dedicated to advancing a peaceful transition to democracy”, to hold a meeting in Dharamsala was in itself a departure from the past.
India is mindful of its political commitments to China that it would not allow either the Dalai Lama or exiled Tibetans to carry out "anti-China activities" on Indian soil. On April 19, a national newspaper reported that India was now “upping the ante” against China, by allowing exiles from the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), a Germany-based group that China alleges as being “separatist”, to not only attend the conference but meet the Dalai Lama.
This move was seen as a response to China, which, on March 31, placed a “technical hold” on India’s application to sanction terrorist Masood Azhar, the chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), at the UN Security Council (UNSC) sanctions committee.
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| The Indian government is now being criticised for kowtowing to China. |
On April 21, another national newspaper reported that among those granted visas for the Dharamsala meeting was Dolkun Isa, a leader of the WUC who China says is a “terrorist” behind the bombings that took place in Xinjiang in the 1990s. The clear suggestion in the two reports was that the allowing of WUC leaders to travel to India for the first time was likely a response to China’s stand on Azhar.
But on hearing Isa had been granted a visa, China immediately took the matter up with New Delhi. Officials in Beijing say they strongly raised the matter through “diplomatic channels” at the end of last week, pointing out that Isa had a “red corner notice” issued by Interpol in his name (When Isa travelled to Washington in March to receive an award, Beijing formally protested to the US, citing the Interpol notice). Over the weekend, Isa, a Uyghur exile who fled China’s Xinjiang region and has been a German citizen since 2006, received an email telling him that the electronic visa he had already been issued was now cancelled.
Then this week, two other Chinese activists who planned to attend the April 28 meeting, Lu Jinghua from New York and Ray Wong from Hong Kong, were told their applications for electronic tourist visas were denied. Lu, a prominent Tiananmen Square protest leader who in 1989 led radio broadcasts for the workers’ union during the protests, had applied for an e-visa on April 19. Lu said she found out her visa was denied when checking in at the Air India counter on the day of her departure.
The three cancellations, in the space of a week, have been seen by some dissidents as being driven by pressure from China. Lu, for instance, said she had “no doubt” that China’s influence was to blame for the denial of her visa, while Isa has also suggested that the cancellation of his visa followed Beijing’s strong official reaction.
The Indian ministry of external affairs (MEA), however, offered a more simple explanation. Officials pointed out that all three applicants had applied for a tourist visa, which could only be allowed for either tourism or “casual” business meetings. Attending a conference would require a separate category of a “conference visa”, which was not issued electronically and requires clearance from the ministry of home affairs (MHA).
The MEA said it "would caution against meanings being read either on visa being given to Mr Isa or its subsequent cancellation". Unfortunately, meaning being read into this episode now seems rather unavoidable. The chorus from dissidents is that the Indian government was bowing under pressure from China, especially in the case of Isa, where a visa that was already issued was later revoked.
The facts suggest that the MEA was indeed correct in saying the three visa applications all had errors and it certainly had grounds to refuse them. Yet it is also true that the government hasn’t emerged well out of this entire episode, and on this count, several questions remain unanswered.
It certainly seems the case that some in the Indian government last week appeared keen to publicise the holding of the meeting in Dharamsala – one whose confirmed list of participants included members of a group that China regards as "separatist" and who were being allowed into India for the first time, which the government was, no doubt, well aware of. Ultimately, only one out of the three Uyghur participants appeared to have made it to the meeting.
That list included Isa, whose case is perhaps the most puzzling. On his visa being cancelled, the MEA indicated that the red corner notice "came to its notice" after the e-visa was issued. Even if this is true, it suggests, if nothing else, that the process of issuing electronic visas certainly requires serious review of both the government’s blacklists and the system of background checks. To begin with, Isa's status on Interpol's list was hardly a secret - only in March, he was at the centre of a major spat between the US and China when he visited Washington to receive a human rights award, because of this same red corner notice.
In light of this, the fact that Isa's attendance at the Dharamsala meet was being highlighted left little doubt, even in the minds of several former senior diplomats, that a strong message was indeed being sent by Delhi to Beijing in the wake of the Masood Azhar affair.
Yet in the matter of a week, the same government is now being criticised for kowtowing to China. This is despite the fact that after all, the April 28 meeting of dissidents did indeed go ahead, even if reduced to a lower profile behind-closed-doors affair. Did the government have a change of heart? Or did the message simply go off script? That still remains a mystery.