Pro-Tibet activists deported

BCers sent home after landing at Hong Kong airport

Kate Woznow holds documents issued by Chinese immigration officials.

University of B.C. graduate, Kate Woznow, at the Students For A Free Tibet headquarters in New York yesterday, holds documents issued by Chinese immigration officials. She was barred entrance at Hong Kong airport and sent back to the U.S.

games leadup
>> The Olympic torch landed in Hong Kong from Hanoi yesterday in its first stop on Chinese soil.
>> On Saturday, three Danish human rights activists were detained at the airport in Hong Kong and deported.

Published: May 01, 2008 10:02 a.m.

Last modified: May 21, 2008 4:54 a.m.

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Three pro-Tibet activists — two of them former University of B.C. students — who flew to Hong Kong to discuss their cause with local media were deported before making it out of the airport.

Kate Woznow and Tsering Lama, with Students For A Free Tibet, and another advocate from the United Kingdom, were escorted onto flights back home after arriving at Hong Kong International Airport on Tuesday.

“As soon as we arrived we were immediately taken aside separately and held and questioned for several hours,” Lama, 23, originally from Surrey, said yesterday from her home in Toronto.

“None of us were given information as to why we were being denied entry. We didn’t go there to cause a ruckus,” she said. “In the past Hong Kong’s been really open to foreigners coming in and speaking with journalists. It was the last bastion of freedom in the Chinese republic.

“Now in the lead up to the Olympics they have become very closed.”

Woznow, 27, who grew up in Vancouver and lives in New York, said a private security company is running the immigration process out of the airport.

“They were screening names, looking for people and shutting them out.”

-kristen.thompson@metronews.ca

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