Overstayer goes missing on way back to China

Lu Qing Zhai is upset by the deportation of his wife Wang Peng (pictured) who disappeared on Friday.

A sick, elderly Chinese immigrant says he is "totally lost and confused" after his overstayer wife, removed from New Zealand by Immigration New Zealand last Friday, went missing on her way to China.

The last time 76-year-old Lu Qingzhai heard from his wife Wang Peng, 54, was a call from Kuala Lumpur where she was in transit.

But she did not arrive in Beijing to meet her waiting daughter.

"I just want to know if she is alive and well, but no one will help me and I don't know what to do," said Mr Lu.

"Did she get arrested by Chinese officials after landing in Beijing, or did she run away in Malaysia?"

Mr Lu said he was worried for his wife's safety because she was a "known practitioner" of Falun Gong, a spiritual group that has been outlawed by the Chinese Government since 1999.

He said it was "heartbreaking" to see her being handcuffed by police, and for immigration officials to take her away as though she was some "lowly criminal".

"I thought people are more civilised in a democratic country, but I really see there is no difference between New Zealand and communist China."

Mr Lu claimed his first wife was executed by the Beijing regime in 2005 because she was part of the same movement, and that was why he fled to New Zealand in 2007 as a refugee.

He met Ms Wang through the local Falun Gong movement, and married last May.

Although Mr Lu was granted New Zealand permanent residency, his wife was not.

Despite numerous appeals, Mrs Lu was deported last week, said Poutama Tsoi, a justice of the peace acting for the couple.

Associate Minister of Immigration Kate Wilkinson's private secretary Emma Hope wrote to him last Friday, saying: "The associate minister has given careful consideration to the material received and the circumstances of Ms Wang. I advise that the associate minister is not prepared to intervene in Ms Wang's case."

Mr Tsoi, also a friend of the couple, said it was a "heartless act" for the New Zealand Government to break up a happy marriage.

He said Mr Lu had Bell's palsy, which caused nerve paralysis, and needed help from Ms Wang for simple tasks.

Immigration New Zealand said yesterday that when a person was escorted out of the country, it became a police matter.

But an agency spokesman said Ms Wang had bought her own ticket to leave New Zealand, and the local authorities could do little to track her.