Ti-Anna Wang hadn’t heard from her father in six months. 

 

But one of the last things she expected to learn when her mother broke the news in their Montreal home in 2002 was that more than 11,000 km away, her father had been detained and charged with terrorism and espionage.

 

Abducted at the China-Vietnam border while meeting with 
labour activists, Dr. Wang Bingzhang — the founder of the Chinese democracy movement — had been held incommunicado by Chinese officials and sentenced 
to life imprisonment after a closed trial.

 

 “I knew that he was not guilty of the crime he was charged with,” recalled Ti-Anna. “I just felt like it was a huge misunderstanding that would sort itself out in no time.”

 

Seven years later, Bingzhang languishes in the remote Chinese prison where he is serving his life sentence.

His health has deteriorated in solitary confinement, Ti-Anna said.

 

Ti-Anna, now 20, said she worries that efforts to free her father will diminish when the 
year she took off school to fight 
for his release ends this fall.

 

She begins her first year of East Asian studies at McGill University in September.

 

Ti-Anna — named in commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre -— decided to postpone her studies and lobby for her father’s freedom after graduating from Marianopolis College in 2008.

 

According to Ti-Anna, years of sustained efforts to secure her father’s release were taking a toll on her family. Calls for his release had also come from the likes of Amnesty International and the United Nations, but nothing had worked.

 

“I felt like we needed a jolt, some momentum to put back into his case,” Ti-Anna said. “It was hard for anybody in the family to drop everything, but for me it would only cost a year of my time.”

 

The self-proclaimed shy Montrealer moved to Washington D.C. in August 2008 to lobby for political support for her father, who is a permanent resident of the United States.

 

Living alone in a new city, Ti-Anna said she panicked at first. 

 

“I had no idea what I was doing,” she said with a chuckle. “But I set out . . . to raise the profile of his case in the media and in government.”

 

Ti-Anna spent the year interning with Initiatives for China, a human rights organization. She also garnered the support of Canadian and American politicians, including Canadian Liberal MP Irwin Cotler.

 

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, recently called on Chinese president Hu Jintao to release several political prisoners, Bingzhang included.

 

In January, Ti-Anna wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post berating China’s treatment 
of her father. 

Her brother, 24-year-old Times Wang, said he believes it resonated on an international level.

 

Ti-Anna said the most rewarding experience she’s had this year was the meeting she and Times had with the Dalai Lama.

 

The Dalai Lama told them only so much can be done to free their father, and that worrying will not change the situation.

“Sometimes I think that it’s because I haven’t done something that he’s in that situation, or it’s because I haven’t done enough,” Ti-Anna said.

 

“Hearing [the Dalai Lama] say that, you realize . . . that you can’t bear all the weight of responsibility.”

 

Times, a law student at Duke University, said that once Ti-Anna begins university, “the rest of the family will have to pick up the slack.”

 

“It’s not that hard to get people to pay attention, but it’s easy for it to fizzle out,” he said.

 

Still, Ti-Anna said as soon as she adjusts to her class schedule and course-load, she will resume her campaign.

 

“I know my father would want me to continue with my education,” she said.

 

“I am really hoping that being in a university setting and having a student body will be helpful in my work.”

 

Bingzhang, born near Beijing, came to Canada in 1979 to study at McGill University.

 

Driven by his dream of a democratic China ruled by law, he abandoned a promising career in medicine, Ti-Anna said.

 

He moved to New York in 1982 to start the overseas Chinese democracy movement and 
devoted himself to the cause

for
20 years.

 

Now 61, Bingzhang has suffered three strokes in prison, Times
said. He also stated that his father is afflicted by chronic phlebitis, depression and severe allergies.

 

According to Times, Bingzhang is allowed one 30-minute visit from a family member each 
month, during which he is separated from his visitor by bars and Plexiglas, and speaks through a telephone as four guards keep watch.

 

Times visited Bingzhang on June 29. He said his father’s health has improved, but that he longs to see his aging mother, an 89-year-old Vancouver woman who is too frail to travel overseas.

 

Ti-Anna last saw her father in November. She was denied entry at the border in May, which Times said could have been China’s reaction to her activism in Washington. 

 

She will try to re-enter China in December.

 

“I feel that it’s impossible that he’ll be imprisoned forever,” Ti-Anna said.

 

“His sentence is forever, but it’s hard to accept.”