Taiwan airline denies Wang Dan ticket canceled

Asian Economic News, June 7, 1999

TAIPEI, June 4 Kyodo

Taiwan's Eva Airways on Friday denied press reports that the airline bowed to Chinese pressure and canceled a flight reservation for exiled Chinese student leader Wang Dan, who was planning to attend a pro-democracy symposium in Macao.

A spokesman for the airline said the reports, originating from Hong Kong, were "entirely unfounded and untrue."

He said Wang, one of the leaders of the student-led 1989 pro-democracy protests in China, is still scheduled to board an Eva Airways flight in San Francisco as originally planned at 1:30 a.m. Friday (local time) and will arrive for a short stopover in Taipei early Saturday. The democracy activist, who currently studies history at Harvard University, is slated to take a connecting flight to the Portuguese enclave on Saturday 10:10 a.m. Taipei time, he said.

Wang, who visited Taiwan in April, has been invited to attend a symposium in Macao organized by the dissident magazine China Spring over the weekend on the "One country, two systems" framework that will govern Macao's return to Chinese rule in December.

Earlier in the day, Taiwan's semi-official Central News Agency quoted one of the symposium organizers as saying Wang's ticket had been canceled by the airline.

Eva Airways, Taiwan's second largest international carrier, offers flights to Shanghai, Ningbo and Qingdao via Macao in cooperation with Chinese domestic airlines. Taiwan does not have direct air links with China.