Delight for mother as five-year fight for custody of son ends

PETALING JAYA: After a five-year fight to get her son back to Malaysia from her ex-husband in China, Cheng Chau Yang and her son finally landed here late on Tuesday night
Chau Yang, 42, and her eight-year-old son, had been prohibited from leaving China since October 2015 after her ex-husband, a Chinese national, sought a court order for the travel ban.
A Shanghai court had imposed the travel ban, renewable every three months until her son turns 18, on the request of the ex-husband whilst her son holds a Malaysian citizenship.
Chau Yang's ordeal had begun in 2012 when her then-estranged husband abducted her son, then three but the husband returned their child to Chau Yang a week later after being unable to take care of his medical needs, according to media reports.
In July 2013, he abducted her son again while the boy was with his babysitter and Chau Yang was in Singapore for work and he disappeared.
Chau Yang, who works in Shangai, filed for divorce seven months later with the court there giving her full custody and her ex-husband's appeal failed but Chau Yang was informed by the court that the custody could not be enforced.
She worked tirelessly and finally found her son living with her ex-husband's eldest sister under a fake identity in October 2015 in Changchun city and his family then attempted to take the child away again in January last year, it said.
Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman played a major role in getting the Chinese government to overturn their travel ban after Chau Yang's elder sister Myra wrote an open letter to the Chinese Ambassador to Malaysia Huang Huikang.
Myra had claimed that her sister had made several appeals to the court, including in September last year, to return to Malaysia to see their ailing grandmother, but was not successful as the response was that the travel ban could not be lifted without her ex-husband's consent to secure his weekly visitation rights.
Chau Yang's family took several steps such as producing a Youtube drama "Mama on a Mission" and they also urged the public to sign an online petition to highlight her plight as well as a Facebook page to campaign for the freedom of movement for Chau Yang and her son.
Below is the Youtube drama "Mama on a Mission":