Accused of bomb threats they say they didn’t make, family of Chinese dissident detained in Thailand

When Gao Peng landed in Thailand on July 3, he was not expecting to be accused of making bomb threats, to be put on an EU travel blacklist, or to see his mother and 16-year-old sister detained and threatened with deportation back to China.

But bomb threats made in his and his mother’s names against airports, luxury hotels and the Chinese embassy in Bangkok derailed the family’s plan to seek asylum in the Netherlands, where Gao Peng’s father moved three years ago. The threats appear to be part of Beijing’s increasingly sophisticated efforts to harass Chinese dissidents living overseas and their families.

While parts of the story told by Gao Peng and his father, Gao Zhi, couldn’t be independently confirmed, their predicament echoes accounts by other Chinese dissidents abroad, who believe Chinese authorities are making bomb threats in their names to control their political…