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Assume that there is a refugee being persecuted by China with an active arrest warrant, who has sought protection in another country and granted refugee status. He then boarded a plane from Europe to Taiwan, however, due to some problems the plane was diverted to Shanghai in China.

What will happen to him in this case?

Michael Tsang
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  • Instead of diverting to Kaohsiung or Songshan airports, which seems much more likely? Though it may depend on the specific reason for the diversion. – Michael Hampton Aug 16 '19 at 07:07
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    What sort of an answer would you want? If China knows about the passenger, they would probably be arrested. What else do you want discussed? Would the crew fight for the passenger? Probably not. Would there be an international crisis? Depends on the passenger. Etc etc. –  Aug 16 '19 at 07:08
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    A somewhat recent case is the Bolivian president being diverted in order to catch Edward Snowden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident – helm Aug 16 '19 at 10:18
  • The questions is hypothetical and misleading: how can someone in this scenario already have refugee status? –  Aug 16 '19 at 11:22

1 Answers1

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It is possible that he will be persecuted.

There were few of such cases (usually just for very important reasons, and few of the worst criminals/terrorists).

Often airlines will cooperate, or they will risk to lose permission to fly above or into that country.

In any case, this has a lot to do with diplomacy, so it is difficult to have a definitive answer. As diplomacy rules, it depends on relation between the many countries (passenger, diverted state, airline, plane), consequences, etc. But if a country do it to capture a passenger, the diplomatic decision (also unilateral) have already been taken.

If diversion was not intentional (for such reason), and they discover later the passenger name, this case would be more complex. Probably the country will try to delay the new departure, waiting to get a sort of permission from other countries, or just to decide that the diplomatic risk is worth.

But this question has much more to do with politics and diplomacy, and not much about law and travel.

And in your hypothetical case: When you flight to Taiwan from Europe, one usually flight above mainland China, so China has power to divert the plane for security reasons. There is very little one could complain. If he want to be safe, he should flight to Japan (Siberian route) and back, or via India and Philippines (or nearby countries).

Giacomo Catenazzi
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