February 19, 2004 Thursday
A Canadian member of the Falun Gong movement has been barred from getting on a flight to Hong Kong to promote his book about a protest in China, the author and airline confirmed Thursday.
Zenon Dolnyckyj was stopped from boarding his China Airlines flight 10 minutes before it was due to take off from Taipei after the airline received a fax marked "urgent" from Hong Kong's immigration department.
A fax, released by Dolnyckyj, 26, at a press conference in Taipei said that he should not be taken to Hong Kong unless he had a valid visa issued by the department.
No reason was given for the decision. The airline confirmed it had received a fax that prevented him from flying but declined to comment further.
Canadian citizens are normally allowed in Hong Kong for 90 days without a visa, according to the Hong Kong Immigration website. The department Thursday declined to comment on the case.
"I was very shocked that (the immigration department) was treating this as some kind of emergency and that I'm being tracked and followed. I entered Hong Kong twice in the past with no problems," Dolnyckyj said.
"This is absolutely deplorable that I'm being treated this way. It's a serious issue. What they are doing is a violation of my human rights," he said.
Dolnyckyj had been in Taiwan for two weeks promoting his book and planned to move on to Hong Kong before returning to Canada.
The book, Coming for You, is an account of his life as a Falun Gong member and his journey to Beijing's Tiananmen Square from Canada for a demonstration at which the group says he and 35 others from 12 countries were arrested.
The writer, who was deported after taking part in the protest two years ago, claimed that he was banned because he was considered a "threat to China" and pressure was put on the Hong Kong government.
China outlawed Falun Gong [...] in mid-1999 and practitioners have subsequently faced often brutal repression.
Category: Persecution Outside China
