(TibetanReview.net, Sep09’24) – A Tibet activist from Germany was able to travel across China under the latter’s visa-free entry policy for citizens of his country but turned away from Hong Kong, supposedly a bastion of democracy and freedom under the 1997 guarantee of “one country, two systems policy” for the supposedly special administrative region.
David Missal, from the Berlin-based advocacy group Tibet Initiative Deutschland, has said he was denied entry into Hong Kong last weekend, after he tried to fly into the city from Beijing. He became at least the second activist turned back by Hong Kong this year, noted the AFP Sep 8.
“After 13 sleepless hours under immigration examination… I was told that I could not enter the city and was eventually allowed to take a plane to Vietnam,” Missal, the group’s vice executive director, has said on the social media platform X Sep 8.
“I was able to travel to China within the visa-free policy, but not to (Hong Kong),” Missal has said, adding that his luggage was also searched.
In order to boost tourism amid its stubbornly stagnating economy, China last year granted visa-free entry to Germans and a few other European passport holders, allowing them to transit through the mainland for up to 15 days.
The report cited Missal as saying he and some colleagues had their visa applications to mainland China rejected in the past, but that he had studied in Hong Kong in 2018 and 2019.
Missal has said he was on a vacation, with plans to travel to China, then Hong Kong and Vietnam, rather than being on a “work-related” trip.
Hong Kong’s immigration department has maintained that it “does not comment on individual cases” when approached by the AFP.
Earlier this year, international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said one of its representatives was stopped and questioned when she tried to enter Hong Kong, before being deported.