British Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse was denied entry when she went to Hong Kong on April 10 to visit her relatives.
In an April 15 article published in The Guardian, Hobhouse called on the British government to respond strongly to the threats from the Chinese Communist Party and said there should be no more ministerial visits until the UK receives clear explanations from China.
She said she and her husband went to Hong Kong to visit their newborn grandchild on April 10 but were stopped and questioned for three hours upon arrival, and their luggage was thoroughly searched.
Eventually, they were told they had been denied entry and were bundled onto the next flight back to London without any explanation, according to Hobhouse.
She described the experience as one of “anguish” and “confusion” and attributed it to her membership of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) and her public criticism of Beijing’s human rights abuses.
In the article, Hobhouse criticized the Chinese communist regime’s authoritarian tactics as “opaque and impenetrable” and warned the British government not to regard this as just “the cost of doing business.”
She called on British government officials to stop visiting China before Hong Kong authorities gave a clear explanation for her deportation, limit the regime’s influence in the UK, and immediately stop its plan to build a “super embassy” in London to prevent it from becoming a base for potential “spy dungeons“ and conduct a comprehensive review of the assets in the UK of companies and officials from ”countries of human rights concern” such as China.
The British government issued a statement on April 14 saying Douglas Alexander, the UK’s secretary of state for trade and industry, who is visiting mainland China and Hong Kong, has expressed the British government’s concerns and worries to Chief Secretary for Administration Eric Chan Kwok-ki and other senior Hong Kong government officials, demanding an explanation for the reasons for refusing entry to a British MP.
The British government said imposing unreasonable restrictions on British citizens entering Hong Kong would only further damage Hong Kong’s international reputation and the important people-to-people ties between Britain and Hong Kong. It stressed that it was unacceptable for any MP to be denied entry for simply expressing their views.
The statement said that Hong Kong’s Immigration Department acts “in accordance with relevant law and immigration policy” in each case.
