U.S. citizen, and convicted Chinese dissident Harry Wu was barred from entering Hong Kong last Sunday. That did not stop him from speaking with the territory's media and academic community.
At the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondent Club, human-rights groups and media listened in, while Harry Wu spoke through a conference call from Washington.
Only three-days earlier, Mr. Wu had been barred from entering Hong Kong.
During the conference call, he told audiences in Hong Kong and Beijing about the experience.
He said, "Finally one of the officers came back to me and said, 'Now I can tell you only two words the rejection reason is; "security reason." I said, 'Would explain what is that?' and he said, 'I am sorry, I am not in the position to explain.'"
Hong Kong, a former British colony is currently run under a "one country, two systems policy" implemented by Beijing in 1997. The policy allows the territory a high degree of autonomy.
But Mr. Wu concluded that Hong Kong immigration is not acting on its own accord. He says it is following policies passed down from Beijing.
Mr. Wu became an outspoken critic of China's human-rights record after spending 19 years in Chinese labor camps. After his release from prison, he moved to the United States and became a citizen.
He traveled to China several times in the early 1990s to secretly visit prison camps and document abuses in them. He was arrested by Beijing authorities again in 1995 on one of those visits. But after being convicted of treason and sentenced to 15 years in prison, Mr. Wu was released and deported.