Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong has been detained in Thailand

Newsbeat

Student activist and poster boy of Hong Kong’s 2014 pro-democracy protest Joshua Wong is being held at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Thai immigration police said. Wong was due to give a talk at an event hosted by Chulalongkorn University about youth participation in politics, the Umbrella Movement and Hong Kong’s new political party Demosisto, said the party’s deputy secretary general Agnes Chow. Demosisto released a statement: Joshua Wong, Secretary General of Demosist', left Hong Kong last night via Emirates (Flight EK385) en route to Bangkok, Thailand, where he has been invited to speak at an event hosted by Chulalongkorn University. The flight has arrived on schedule at around 11:45 p.m. local time. We have, however, been unable to contact him until 4:18 a.m. Hong Kong time, when Netiwit Chotipatpaisal, the Thai student-activist expected to meet Wong in Bangkok, notified us that Wong has been detained at Suvarnabhumi Airport. A spokesman in the police immigration office at the Bangkok airport told Quartz “”We were told by our superiors not to give updates or comments to reporters.” The Thai student activist who had been set to meet Wong, Netiwit Choitpatpaisal, told Demosisto that the Thai authorities had received a letter from the Chinese government earlier regarding Wong’s visit. His request to see Wong has been denied. Human rights activists were alarmed that Beijing’s ongoing crackdown on free speech was extending outside of China’s borders. “Thailand’s arrest of Joshua Wong, a well-known pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong, sadly suggests that Bangkok is willing to do Beijing’s bidding. Wong should be freed immediately and allowed to travel and exercise his right to free expression,” said Sophie Richardson the China Director of Human Rights Watch. This is the second time in the last year that a politically sensitive figure from Hong Kong has run into trouble in Thailand. One of Hong Kong’s five missing booksellers, Gui Minhai, who sold books containing salacious tales about Chinese Communist Party officials, went missing from his Pattaya home at the end of 2015.