The Olympic torch landed back on Chinese soil yesterday at the end of its troubled world tour as more activists were denied entry to Hong Kong ahead of its arrival.
Flag-waving children and a marching band greeted the torch as it arrived by plane from Vietnam and was carried to the tarmac by Yang Shu’an (楊樹安) of the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee.
Hong Kong officials including Home Affairs Secretary Tsang Tak-sing (曾德成) and Olympic Committee president Timothy Fok (霍震霆) held a brief reception to welcome the torch.
PHOTO: AFP
Tomorrow, the torch will be taken on a 30km relay through the city of 6.9 million that will be watched closely for any protests or demonstrations over Tibet and human rights.
Hong Kong is the only place in China apart from Macau where demonstrations criticizing China are tolerated.
However, the territory’s Beijing-appointed administration has taken a hard line against protestors so far, expelling Danish sculptor and human rights activist Jens Galschiot and his sons when they arrived Saturday to take part in anti-China protests.
Four more activists have also been refused entry at Hong Kong international airport, including two members of the Students for Free Tibet movement and the London-based spokesman for the Free Tibet Campaign, Matt Whitticase.
In a statement sent to DPA after he was ordered to return to the UK, Whitticase said: “Everywhere one looks, China is slamming the door in the face of free expression ... Tourists are being refused entry to Tibet, journalists are being prevented from reporting freely from Tibet, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai and now I have been denied entry to Hong Kong.”
“Denying me entry not only represents a slap in the face for the concept of ‘one country, two systems.’ It also demonstrates yet again that China clearly has much to hide in Tibet,” he said.
Students for a Free Tibet organizers Kate Woznow and Tsering Lama were among those who were turned away.
Woznow, a Canadian, said she was put on a return flight to New York.
Tsering Lama, an ethnic Tibetan Canadian citizen, was also deported, but it wasn’t immediately clear where to, Students for a Free Tibet spokeswoman Lhadon Tethong said. She traveled to Hong Kong from Toronto, Canada.
Mark Allison, a spokesman for Amnesty International’s Hong Kong branch, urged the government not to abuse its authority and to explain the grounds for the deportations.
Actress and Dafur activist Mia Farrow is due to arrive in Hong Kong today and criticize China for failing to stop the genocide in the Sudan in a speech at the Foreign Correspondents Club tomorrow.
The Immigration Department on yesterday refused to confirm or deny claims that Farrow would be denied entry when she lands in Hong Kong.
Some 3,000 police are expected to guard the torch relay route through Hong Kong from 10am tomorrow and the notorious blue-tracksuited Chinese police guards will be back in action for the event.
Singer-actor Jacky Cheung (張學友), windsurfing gold medallist Lee Lai-shan (李麗珊) and Victor Li (李澤楷), son of Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠), will be among the torch bearers.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS