{"id":14375,"date":"2025-04-13T05:57:15","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T05:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=14375"},"modified":"2025-04-13T05:57:15","modified_gmt":"2025-04-13T05:57:15","slug":"british-mp-denied-entry-to-hong-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=14375","title":{"rendered":"British MP denied entry to Hong Kong"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=3ac13947-cd31-42e7-ba5d-0a261ef4e365\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>Hong Kong has barred a British member of parliament from entering the Chinese territory, adding uncertainty to UK-China ties just as the Labour government seeks to step up bilateral economic relations.<\/p>\n<p>Wera Hobhouse, a Liberal Democrat MP for Bath and a member of the cross-border Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac), said she was refused entry upon arrival to Hong Kong this week without specific reasons provided by authorities.<\/p>\n<p>The incident comes as the Labour government seeks to forge closer ties with China. UK chancellor Rachel Reeves and foreign secretary David Lammy have travelled 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.<\/p>\n<p>Hobhouse\u2019s ejection \u201cappears linked to her criticism of Beijing\u2019s human rights record\u201d and possibly her Ipac membership, the alliance said in a statement on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat the Hong Kong authorities felt able to deny entry to a sitting parliamentarian while simultaneously hosting UK Ministers is an insult to Parliament,\u201d said Ipac, a cross-party international group established in 2020 and focused on human rights issues in China.<\/p>\n<p>Hobhouse flew to Hong Kong with her husband on Thursday to see their newborn grandson, but she was held at airport security and questioned before being put on a flight back to the UK hours later, Hobhouse told the Sunday Times, which first reported the news.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAuthorities gave me no explanation for this cruel and upsetting blow,\u201d Hobhouse later wrote on social media platform Bluesky, adding that she believed she was the \u201cfirst MP to be refused entry on arrival to Hong Kong since 1997\u201d, the year when the UK handed the territory back to China.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hope the Foreign Secretary will recognise that this is an insult to all parliamentarians and seek answers from the Chinese Ambassador,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Her husband, a businessman, was permitted to enter but decided to return to the UK with her, according to the Times.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe will urgently raise this with the authorities in Hong Kong and Beijing to demand an explanation,\u201d foreign secretary Lammy said, according to the BBC.<\/p>\n<p>The British Consulate General in Hong Kong said they were \u201caware\u201d of Hobhouse\u2019s entry denial and were \u201craising this urgently with Hong Kong authorities\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey called the entry refusal \u201cheartless\u201d. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Chinese authorities turned her away \u2014 just because she\u2019s a British MP\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009totally unacceptable,\u201d he wrote on social media platform X.<\/p>\n<p>In 2014, amid pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, British MPs on a committee conducting an inquiry into the UK\u2019s relations with the city were told by China they would be \u201crefused entry\u201d if they travelled there, saying Beijing warned them the proposed delegation would be showing support for protesters\u2019 \u201cillegal activity\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Academics and journalists in recent years have been denied entry into the Chinese territory.<\/p>\n<p>Hong Kong\u2019s immigration department and China\u2019s embassy in the UK did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>Beijing has cracked down on dissent in Hong Kong after pro-democracy protests in 2019, including imposing a sweeping national security law.<\/p>\n<p>The department in October said it had compiled a \u201cwatch list\u201d of unwelcomed individuals deemed a risk to the territory\u2019s social order or national security.<\/p>\n<p>Hong Kong refused entry to more than 23,000 people in the first nine months of last year, the department said, a majority of them because of \u201csuspicious\u201d reasons for entry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/3ac13947-cd31-42e7-ba5d-0a261ef4e365\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" rel=\"nofollow\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Hong Kong&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14375","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>British MP denied entry to Hong Kong | inFundPros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Hong Kong has barred a British\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=14375\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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