Pro-Tibet Canadian activists refused entry into Hong Kong

by cynthia yoo | April 30, 2008 at 01:16 pm | 109 views | add comment

Two Canadians have been refused entry into Hong Kong by Chinese authorities. Other pro-Tibet activists have also been barred from landing as the government takes firm measures to muzzle protests during the final torch relay leg in Hong Kong.

Former Vancouver resident Kate Woznow, 28, said Chinese immigration officials rejected her entry and put her on an airplane back to New York City five hours after she landed in Hong Kong. Woznow said Tsering Lama, 24, a Nepalese-born Tibetan from Toronto, was also stopped from entering Hong Kong and sent on a flight back to Canada.

"It has been a crazy 36-hour whirlwind," said Woznow in a telephone interview with Canwest News Service early Wednesday morning after landing in New York at around midnight local time.

Woznow, a director with Students for a Free Tibet, said she and Lama planned to take part in a Hong Kong news conference Thursday to highlight the ongoing situation inside Tibet and Chinese regions with large ethnic Tibetan populations. The Edmonton-born University of British Columbia graduate said she believes Chinese immigration authorities turned them away at the gate because of their pro-Tibet activism.

"They are actively scanning for any Tibet activists or human rights people, anyone travelling there to speak about these issues," said Woznow. "They were basically screening passengers without questioning them that thoroughly. They did not get into details about what I was doing there."

Woznow said an official at the airport's immigration counter looked at her passport, filled out a "restricted card," and called another official over who escorted her to a nearby interrogation room. She said the questioning took three hours but remained general in nature and her interrogator often left the room between queries.

"I wasn't going to lie to them. I was going to be honest about what I was doing there," she said.

Woznow, who now lives in New York, had not been in contact with Lama but found out through her organization that the Toronto resident, who landed in Hong Kong two hours after Woznow, was also put through the same process and sent back to Toronto.

A spokeswoman for Hong Kong's immigration department would not comment on individual cases, adding it had "the responsibility to uphold effective immigration control so as to ensure Hong Kong's public interest."