HK blocks Tibet activists, open image tested

HONG KONG - Hong Kong blocked three pro-Tibet campaigners from entering the city on Tuesday and deported them just days before the Olympic torch relay though the former British colony, activists said.
Kate Woznow and Tsering Lama of the New York-based group Students for a Free Tibet, and Matt Whitticase of the London-based Free Tibet Campaign, were questioned at immigration and then put on flights leaving Hong Kong, said Lhadon Tethong, executive director of the student group.
"We are disturbed that Hong Kong is clearly not open and working under a different system" from the mainland, Tethong said by telephone from New York.
The three were planning to hold a news conference on the situation in Tibet, which convulsed with anti-Beijing protests in March and has been under lockdown since.
Rights activists in Hong Kong have been seeking an explanation from the government for why it denied entry last week to three Danes planning to protest at the torch parade on Friday.
Separately, last week the editorial board of the in-house journal of the Hong Kong Law Association decided not to publish an article its editor had commissioned for its May cover arguing that Tibet had a right to self-determination.
Taken together, critics say, the incidents highlight creeping self-censorship in the former British colony that has been under Chinese rule since July 1997, and raise serious questions about its autonomy and international image.
"I think there is a growing atmosphere of unwillingness to allow activities, publications, publicity for points of view that the mainland disapproves of," said lawyer Paul Harris, author of the article that was rejected by the magazine Hong Kong Lawyer.
The immigration department could not be reached for a comment on the latest deportations.
Hong Kong officials say they are determined that the city's torch run will go smoothly after a series of disruptions to the flame's parade around the world.
"Rollback"
The watchdog group Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor said it was drafting a letter asking the immigration department why it barred entry to Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot and two others, who had planned to protest against rights violations in China during the Olympic torch relay in the city on May 2.
"We want to express to them that we think this is a rollback," said Law Yuk-kai, director of the Monitor. The decision was "disastrous" and undermined Hong Kong's special status vis-a-vis China, he added.
U.S. actress Mia Farrow also plans to address the Foreign Correspondents Club in the city Friday. Her group, Dream for Darfur, is seeking to use the Beijing Olympics as leverage to influence China's policy on Sudan.
Since 1997, Hong Kong has maintained autonomy in many areas, but Beijing has closely managed political change.
In 2001, amid controversy over Hong Kong's decision to deny entry to members of the spiritual group Falun Gong, then-security chief Regina Ip acknowledged that the city kept a blacklist.
Four years later, Hong Kong admitted hundreds of South Korean anti-globalisation protesters for a meeting of the World Trade Organisation. Many of the demonstrators had a history of violence and eventually clashed with police during the meeting.
But Ma Ngok, a politics analyst at Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the government may have a tough time justifying denying entry to Galschiot, who has visited Hong Kong many times and never engaged in violence here.
Galschiot sculpted Hong Kong University's Pillar of Shame, a writhing mass of human figures which marks the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests centred on Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
Hong Kong's permanent secretary for home affairs acknowledged on Tuesday the incident may have created a "perception problem".