February 20, 2003
Dow Jones Newswires
HONG KONG (AP)--Four Taiwanese members of the Falun Gong meditation group were barred from entering Hong Kong and immediately sent back to Taiwan Thursday, one member said.
Wang Fuming, 44, said by telephone from Taiwan's Kaohsiung airport that Hong Kong immigration authorities denied him and three other members permission to enter the territory.
Wang said officials searched them and their luggage and detained them for more than two hours before putting them on a plane back to Kaohsiung, a southern Taiwanese city.
Wang said officials did not explain why they were denied entry while 26 other Falun Gong members in their group were allowed into Hong Kong.
"We asked an immigration official whether it was because we were Falun Gong members. He smiled and said he was only a low-ranking officer and was simply following his superiors' order," Wang said. "I believe they have a blacklist."
Falun Gong is banned in China [...] but it is legal in Hong Kong, which returned to China from British rule in 1997 and is still governed separately.
The group frequently stages protests here against Beijing's treatment, and has expressed fears that it could be targeted under a planned anti-subversion law that critics worry would threaten Hong Kong's western-style freedoms guaranteed after the handover.
[...]
Kan Hung-cheung, a local Falun Gong spokesman, said he believed the Hong Kong government has been "pressured by Beijing to tighten control over the group's activities" and hence kept some of the followers away.
Wang said he and the other three members - Lin Tsung-cheng, 45, Chen Kuei-lin, 42, and Ho Hsiu-e, 54 - had planned to attend a Falun Gong conference in Hong Kong on Saturday.
[...]
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