Chinese student Wei Amanda Zhao and her boyfriend Ang Li. Photo / via AP
Chinese student Wei Amanda Zhao and her boyfriend Ang Li. Photo / via AP
Members of the Tibetan community in Auckland are outraged that a convicted murderer from China who entered NZ using a passport with a different identity and fighting deportation is claiming to be a victim of Chinese persecution because he was pro-Tibet.
Chinese national Leo Li, 38, came to New Zealand on a visitor’s visa five years ago using a passport that had a different name and date of birth and has had his application to be recognised as a refugee and protected person declined.
The Herald on Sunday revealed that Li, also known as Ang Li, Jiaming Li and Zongyuan Li, is a convicted killer who had been jailed for the murder of his 21-year-old girlfriend Amanda Zhou. Her body was found in a lake in Canada where the pair were living as international students in 2002.
Li, who Immigration NZ says has another undisclosed identity via a false Antigua and Barbuda passport, is a regular participant at free-Tibet protests and marches.
Tibetan community leaders Nyandak Rishul, president of the NZ Tibetan Association, and Wangdue Tsering, past president, with the Tibetan flag. Photo / Dean Purcell
But Tibetan community leaders are distancing themselves from Li, saying he turned up at the protests uninvited and they wanted nothing to do with him.
Wangdue Tsering, former president of the Auckland Tibetan Association, said Li started showing up at the protests “from out of nowhere” and without invitation.
“He approached me for a letter of support when I was the association’s president asking to help him and his family stay here, saying his father was the vice-commander of the Tibet Military Region in Lhasa and a Tibet sympathiser,” Tsering said.
“I didn’t buy his story and I did not issue any letter. As you know, there are many Chinese infiltration attempts in the Tibetan community.”
Li told the Herald he and his family escaped persecution in Tibet and came to New Zealand about four years ago.
“Our family had experienced torture, abuse, confinement, house arrest, social engineering and harassment in the communist regime,” he claimed.
According to Immigration NZ documents, Li said that in 2008, the Chinese Police Minister and a top official in the judiciary and military operations in China had ordered the genocide of Tibetans during a time when there were “massive protests for democracy”.
Leo Li participating in a free-Tibet protest outside the Chinese Consulate office.
He said that his father “resisted orders to brutalise the Tibetans and protesters” and they fought the Chinese to protect the Tibetans. The CCP started targeting him because he helped his father, Li claimed.
A year after the 2008 Tibet uprising, Li said he was “suddenly arrested and forcibly taken away” with handcuffs and his head placed under a black hood until he nearly suffocated.
“I’ve googled and tried to search for information about his dad, I mean if you’re the second top person in command during the worst unrest in Tibet, there must be something about him - but there was none,” Tsering claimed.
In Tsering’s opinion: “Chinese military officers sent to Tibet are unlikely to survive if they defy orders, so the fact that his father is still living in China and able to send money to buy him a property and support his stay in New Zealand makes his story more dubious.”
In a 2012 Globe and Mail report, Li’s mother was quoted as saying his father was an army scientist and not a high-ranking officer.
The Tibetan Association says Leo Li came without being invited to take part in the protests.
Li often turned up at the protests carrying a photo of the Dalai Lama and draping the Tibetan flag over him.
But Tsering said he believed that: “Leo is not Tibetan nor of Tibetan descent and does not speak our language.”
Nyandak Rishul, president of the Auckland Tibetan Association, said the community felt “angry and disgusted”.
“We assumed he was one of the Tibetan causes’ sympathisers, but if we had been aware of his past we would have stopped him from participating in our rallies and marches,” Rishul said.
“Tibetans in NZ and around the world are horrified and filled with sadness to see our most respected and revered flag flying alongside a murderer who isn’t even Tibetan.”
Leo Li claims his pro-Tibet stance has made him a target of the CCP. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Li did not respond to the Herald’s emails or return calls made to his mobile.
Li is currently appealing against the INZ decision to deny him refugee status, and says he would face imprisonment and torture if he went back to China.
He denies killing Zhou, saying he never saw the body and believed she was still alive and “walking around somewhere”.
In the INZ report, it was noted that Li had used multiple identities, three different dates of birth and two different places of birth, describing him as someone of “changeable character and accustomed to performance and deception”.
It concluded also that there was no real chance for Li and his immediate family to face persecution from the CCP if they returned to China.
INZ general manager refugee and migrant services Fiona Whiteridge said the agency wasn’t able to comment as Li’s case was now before the Immigration and Protection Tribunal for appeal.
Tibet is a remote and mainly-Buddhist territory that is governed as an autonomous region of China. But for many Tibetans, their allegiances lie with exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who China regards as a separatist threat.
After a failed anti-Chinese uprising in 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama fled Tibet and set up a government in exile in India, and thousands of Tibetans are believed to have been killed during periods of martial law and repression.
