British MP denied entry into Hong Kong

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Hong Kong deprived the British MP from the entry into the Chinese territory, adding uncertainty to the UK-China as soon as the Labor government seeks to intensify bilateral economic relations.

Wera Hobhouse, a deputy of the Liberal Democrat on Batu and a member of the cross -border inter -parliamentary alliance on China (IPAC), said she was denied entering Hong Kong this week for no specific reasons provided by the authorities.

The incident happens as a government’s government seeks to customize the closest connections with China. Britain’s Chancellor Rachel Rivz and Foreign Minister David Lami traveled to Beijing in recent months, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang YI was in London in February. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is expected to visit China this year.

Hobhaus’s release “is related to her criticism of human rights records” and perhaps her IPAC membership, the Alliance said on Sunday.

“The fact that Hong Kong authorities feel capable of denying the parliamentarian, while conducting the UK ministers simultaneously, is an insult to parliament,” said an IPAC, an international international group created in 2020 and focused on human rights issues.

Hobhaus flew to Hong Kong with her husband on Thursday to see her grandson of the newborn, but she went to the security airport and interrogated before she was sent to the UK a few hours later, said Hobhouse The Sunday Times, which first reported the news.

“The authorities did not give me an explanation for this brutal and upset strike,” Hobhaus wrote later on the social media platform Bluzsky, adding that he believed that “the first deputy who refused to enter Hong Kong since 1997” when the UK handed over to China.

“I hope that the Foreign Minister admits that this is an insult for all parliamentarians and is looking for answers from the Ambassador of China,” she wrote.

Her husband, businessman, allowed to enter, but decided to return to the UK with her, Times reports.

“We will urgently raise this with the authorities in Hong Kong and Beijing to demand explanations,” Foreign Minister Lami said, BBC reports.

The Consulate General of the British Consulate in Hong Kong said they “know” the refusal during the Hobhaus and “urgently raise it with the Hong Kong authorities.”

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davi called the refusal to refuse “thoughtless”.

“The Chinese authorities turned her away – just because she is a British MP … is absolutely unacceptable,” he wrote on the social media platform X.

In 2014, against the backdrop of pro -democratic protests in Hong Kong, British deputies in the Committee conducting an investigation into UK relations with the city, said that they would “refuse to enter” when they would go there, saying that Beijing warned that the proposed delegation would be supported by “illegal activities”.

Academics and journalists in recent years have been denied entry to Chinese territory.

The Hong Kong Immigration Department and the Chinese Embassy in the UK did not immediately respond to a comment request.

Beijing hacked the dissent in Hong Kong after protests on democracy in 2019, including the introduction of a strong national security law.

The department said in October that he had compiled a “list of observations” of unwanted persons who considered the risk to public order or national security of the territory.

Hong Kong refused to enter more than 23,000 people in the first nine months of last year, noted that most of them are of “suspicious” reasons.