HK expels pro-Tibet activists ahead of torch relay

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

Related Articles

Olympic torch relay resumes after mourning periodHK torch relay begins with patriots shouting insul...Beijing marks 100-day countdown to Games

Hong Kong, April 30:: At least seven activists, including three pro-Tibet protesters who planned to demonstrate during Hong Kong's Olympic torch relay, have been deported ahead of the flame's arrival in the territory Wednesday, activists said.

The flame's return to Chinese soil later Wednesday and the relay in Hong Kong on Friday are high-stakes events for the local government because they follow a global tour marred by protests against Beijing's human rights record and its recent crackdown on protests in Tibet.

The three pro-Tibet activists were deported after they arrived at the airport Tuesday, and a fourth activist - an organizer for an independent Chinese writers' group - also was turned away on Tuesday. Three Danish activists were deported over the weekend.

Mia Farrow was due to arrive in Hong Kong on Thursday to raise awareness about fighting in Sudan's Darfur region. Activists such as the 63-year-old actress want China to press Sudan to let UN peacekeepers into Darfur.

Authorities plan to deploy 3,000 officers to guard the flame, which was carried through Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on Tuesday - the last international leg of the relay.

Hong Kong, a former British colony now ruled by China, is supposed to enjoy Western-style civil liberties such as freedom of expression that are denied in the mainland. It grants visa-free entry to many Westerners, raising the prospects of demonstrations.

However, activists said Kate Woznow and Tsering Lama, organizers for Students for a Free Tibet, and Matt Whitticase, an organizer for the Free Tibet Campaign, were turned away after arriving in Hong Kong on Tuesday.

Woznow, a Canadian, told The Associated Press she was put on a return flight to New York. Whitticase, a British citizen, was booked on a return flight to London, Free Tibet Campaign spokeswoman Claire Cooper said.

Tsering Lama, an ethnic Tibetan Canadian citizen, also was deported, but it wasn't immediately clear where to, Students for a Free Tibet spokeswoman Lhadon Tethong said. She traveled to Hong Kong from Toronto, Canada.

Separately, Zhang Yu, general secretary of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, was detained for at least seven hours at the airport before being put on a plane to Paris late Tuesday, Hong Kong Journalists Association general secretary Mak Yin-ting said Wednesday.

Zhang, who is based in Sweden, was planning to attend a four-day writers' and artists' conference calling for freedom of expression in China that coincided with the torch relay, Mak said.