On April 10, when Wera Hobhouse, the Liberal Democrat member of Parliament (MP) for Bath, flew to Hong Kong, ostensibly on a private visit, she was denied entry. Before being sent back to the United Kingdom, she was interviewed by immigration officers. Although it is the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government’s policy not to comment on individual cases, a spokesman said it was “the duty of (an) immigration officer to ask questions to ascertain that there is no doubt about the purpose of any visit. The person concerned knows best what he or she has done. It will be unhelpful to the person’s case if the person refuses to answer questions put to him or her for that purpose.”
Hobhouse described these comments as “hugely upsetting”, and told the BBC she thought she was barred to “shut me up and silence me”. It cannot have improved her temper that another MP, the UK trade minister, Douglas Alexander, visited Hong Kong at about the same time, without difficulty. It must, moreover, have been particularly galling to find herself bracketed with the serial fantasist, Benedict Rogers, co-founder of the UK-based Hong Kong Watch (which specializes in China smears), who was refused entry in 2017.
Although he shed some crocodile tears on Hobhouse’s behalf, Rogers, sensing a propaganda moment, was ecstatic. He called on the UK government to “re-think its approach to China”, saying it was “not the time to be kowtowing to Beijing”. Although this troubled individual, who now peddles his bile for an organization called Fortify Rights, treats every negative news item about China, however tiny, like manna from heaven, he has still not appreciated that, as in the UK, there is no God-given right for any foreigner to enter Hong Kong.
Under the Basic Law (Art.154), the government of the HKSAR is authorized to “apply immigration controls on entry into, stay in and departure from the region by persons from foreign states and regions”. In other words, Hong Kong can handle individual cases of entry in accordance with the relevant laws and policies. As the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Lin Jian, explained, “Border entry is a matter entirely within a country’s sovereignty.”
In the UK, the system is not dissimilar. Indeed, the former home secretary, Jacqui Smith, once revealed that, on average, five people a month were denied entry to Britain. She also reminded everyone that “coming to this country is a privilege”, and Hobhouse presumably agrees.
The list of people who have been banned from entering the UK, either temporarily or permanently, reads like a Who’s Who of world politics. It includes Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders, Zimbabwe’s former first lady Grace Mugabe (widow of Robert), ex-Albanian president Sali Berisha, former Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad (wife of Bashar), and even South African tribal chief Zwelivelile Mandla Mandela (grandson of Nelson).
Other proscribed individuals include boxer Mike Tyson, whistleblower Edward Snowden, and Jamaican musician Jah Cure.
The latest foreigner to be banned from entering the UK is the French writer and theorist, Renaud Camus, who was invited to speak at a meeting this month about the effects of mass immigration into Europe. In response, his publishers, Vauban Books, told The Daily Telegraph, “The decision to bar Renaud Camus from the UK is only further confirmation that that country has abandoned the most basic principles of liberal democracy. Camus is one of our greatest living writers and will be remembered as such by posterity” (April 18). Strangely, the people who expressed outrage over Hobhouse’s exclusion have had nothing to say about Camus’ banning, and one can only wonder why.
Once Hobhouse returned home, her party leader, Sir Ed Davey, sought to stir things up. He called on the foreign secretary, David Lammy, to summon the Chinese ambassador, adding that the Chinese government could not be allowed to “undermine our democracy by intimidating our parliamentarians”.
Eager to appear supportive, Lammy announced he would “urgently raise this with the authorities in Hong Kong and Beijing to demand an explanation”, adding it would be “unacceptable for an MP to be denied entry for simply expressing their views as a parliamentarian”. However, this was naive, and the organizations with which Hobhouse has closely associated herself do far more than simply express views.
Apart from her membership of the Liberal Democrats, Hobhouse also belongs to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). Both organizations have stridently advocated policies designed to harm China, and nobody should be surprised if their activities have caused alarm across the country.
In 2022, for example, Davey called for the UK, as a political gesture, to boycott the Winter Olympics in Beijing, which, had it snowballed, could have wrecked an event in which China was heavily invested. Moreover, his then-foreign affairs spokesman, Layla Moran, called on the British government to “impose Magnitsky-style sanctions and other measures” on Hong Kong and Chinese mainland officials. These attempts to harm China cannot have endeared Hobhouse’s party to anybody in the country.
However, it is Hobhouse’s IPAC membership which is of greatest concern, given its incessant Sinophobia.
It was founded in 2020 by Rogers (currently an adviser), using a proxy, Luke de Pulford (currently its executive director), and its purpose is to persuade the world’s parliaments to embrace the China-hostile stances for which Hong Kong Watch is infamous. Like a cancer, it has established footholds in 43 parliaments, including those of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. It operates as an anti-China hate machine, trying to harm the country in myriad ways, and seizes every opportunity to besmirch Hong Kong. It even maliciously misdescribed the treatment of the Muslim population in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region as “a genocide”, and regularly calls for Chinese officials to be punished.
Not surprisingly, IPAC is well resourced by China’s antagonists. It has received funds from the US National Endowment for Democracy (known as the “second CIA”), the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (created in 2003 with support from the Taipei government), and the Open Society Foundations (founded by the billionaire American investor George Soros).
Whereas IPAC’s vice-chairs include Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who was sanctioned in 2021 for having, in Beijing’s words, “maliciously spread lies and disinformation” about the country, its members include some of Hobhouse’s fellow Liberal Democrats. They include her former party leader, Tim Farron, and her parliamentary colleagues Alistair Carmichael and Lord (David) Alton.
Carmichael is best remembered for his chairmanship of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong, which conducted a shameful “inquiry” into the Hong Kong Police Force in 2020 and is funded by Fight for Freedom: Stand with Hong Kong (a subversive entity whose activities were recently exposed at the national security trial of the ex-media magnate, Jimmy Lai Chee-ying).
Alton is a sanctioned Hong Kong Watch patron who shamelessly accepted free foreign travel from Stand with Hong Kong in 2019, aided and abetted Carmichael’s police “inquiry” in 2020, and called in 2024 for the imposition of punitive sanctions on Hong Kong’s chief executive, John Lee Ka-chiu.
Last year, moreover, in a crude provocation, IPAC held its IPAC Taipei Summit 2024 in Taiwan, with the likes of Duncan Smith in attendance. Its objective was to coordinate anti-China strategies in the parliaments of its members. The UK’s former security minister, Tom Tugendhat, no friend of Hong Kong, said, “There has never been a more important time to stand with Taiwan,” a common enough view in IPAC circles.
Although Hobhouse may not have always been as brazen in her China-hostile activities as some of her Liberal Democrat and IPAC colleagues (she told The Standard “I am not particularly a China critic, yes, I’m on IPAC, but so are many others”), actions sometimes have consequences. On November 20, 2020, for example, together with Alton, Moran, Duncan Smith and other ideologues, she co-signed a letter to the Financial Times. It claimed it was a “gross inaccuracy” to describe the mobs that almost wrecked Hong Kong in 2019-20 as “rioters” and called for “targeted sanctions” against the “true aggressors”, meaning “the authorities in Hong Kong and Beijing”. The signatories also denounced the “brutal Hong Kong police force”, and denounced the Communist Party of China for running “rampant over human rights”. If she imagined misrepresentations and slurs of this type would win her any friends in China, where there are long memories, it was a grave misjudgment. She has only herself to blame if she is viewed with suspicion in Hong Kong.
However, there is said to be joy in heaven whenever a sinner repents. If Hobhouse acknowledges the error of her ways and cuts her ties to the anti-China brigade, the situation may yet be salvageable. The UK desperately needs a constructive relationship with China, and if she helps to promote one, the doors that are currently closed to her may one day open up.
The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
