Camden News: Chappelow murder | Chinese gulag | Wang Yam

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Camden News - by DAN CARRIER
Published: 18 December 2008

Man accused of Chappelow murder fled Chinese gulag

THE threat of a life sentence in a Chinese labour camp drove the man accused of the murder of Allan Chappelow to flee to the UK, an Old Bailey jury heard yesterday (Wednesday).
Wang Yam, 47, is accused of battering the 87-year-old recluse to death in his home in Downshire Hill, Hampstead, in summer 2006. He denies the charges.
The court heard of Yam’s background as a political dissident when defence QC Kirsty Brimlow questioned witness Philip Baker OBE, a practising barrister.
Mr Baker taught law at Bloomsbury’s School of Oriental and African Studies and had become an expert in Chinese law. After the 1989 Tienanmen Square crackdown, Prof Baker became involved with an association called the June Fourth Support Group, who helped dissidents escape China and settle in the UK.
He said it was because Yam was being threatened by the Chinese state for “dissident activities” that he came to know the defendant. He met Yam days after he first arrived in London to seek asylum.
Prof Baker said: “Before he escaped, he was due to be sent out of Beijing for ‘Reform Through Labour’ – the Chinese equivalent of the Russian gulag. He would have effectively disappeared.”
He said Yam faced no difficulty gaining the right to stay in the UK.
He said: “I helped him fill out his application and 10 days after applying it was granted. That is extremely quick.”
Prof Baker also revealed how he had helped a covert operation to bring Yam’s wife out of Beijing by arranging for her to receive an offer of a masters course in a London University, so she could get a student visa – and then get her political asylum so she could join her husband permanently.
The trial continues.

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