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Detained on arrival and held in windowless room

Teen pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, who was barred from entering Thailand, said he was held in a windowless detention room in Suvarnabhumi International Airport yesterday before being put on a plane and flown home.

Teen pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, who was barred from entering Thailand, said he was held in a windowless detention room in Suvarnabhumi International Airport yesterday before being put on a plane and flown home.

Describing his experience, Mr Wong said he was detained immediately upon arrival at Bangkok late on Tuesday and was taken into custody by 20 police and immigration officers.

He told reporters upon arrival in Hong Kong yesterday that he was not given a clear explanation for his detention and was not allowed to contact his family or lawyer.

“I actually had a lot of discussion with a Thai official but because he didn’t speak English very well, I couldn’t hear him very well,” he said.

“But there was one word I heard very clearly: Blacklist.”

He also said the Thai authorities had shown him a document citing a security law while barring him from entering the country.

“As a Hong Kong person, I did not expect that even if I do not enter mainland China, I would be inside a foreign detention centre, detained by other police. This is unbelievable,” added Mr Wong.

Mr Wong was due to give a talk at Chulalongkorn University about lessons from Hong Kong’s protests, as part of Oct 6 commemorations of a Thai government crackdown on student demonstrators 40 years ago.

The teen who gained prominence for spearheading Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement in 2014, was also prevented from entering Malaysia last year, and said he was relieved that he did not end up like five Hong Kong booksellers who disappeared and later turned up in custody in mainland China.

One of them, Chinese-born Gui Minhai, who is a naturalised Swedish citizen, vanished from his holiday home in Thailand.

“If I hadn’t returned to Hong Kong I can’t imagine what kind of situation I’d be in,” said Mr Wong.

“Fortunately, I did not become another missing person.”

The bookseller case and other incidents have intensified fears in Hong Kong that Beijing is overstepping its boundaries and undermining a “one-country, two systems” formula that governs the territory’s relationship with the mainland.

Meanwhile, new party Demosisto’s leader Nathan Law, said that if it is true Beijing leaned on Thailand, “it will seriously damage the reputation of the Chinese government and it will show a very bad example of how the Chinese government deals with human rights defenders in Hong Kong”.

Mr Law, 23, was elected Hong Kong’s youngest legislator last month and he co-founded the new party with Mr Wong after the protests. AGENCIES

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