HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong, worried protests will upstage a visit by Chinese President Jiang Zemin this week, has deported eight foreign members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, a group spokeswoman and a rights body said on Monday.
Falun Gong, banned in mainland China since 1999, wants to use Jiang's visit to this special administrative region of China to protest against Beijing's crackdown on the quasi-religious group.
While Falun Gong is still legal in Hong Kong, the local government is trying to limit protests by it and other anti-Beijing groups and keep them well away from areas where Jiang will appear.
For Jiang, it will be a rare experience to face protests against his government and its policies on Chinese soil.
The Hong Kong government has declined to comment on the deportations, saying immigration officers turn various people back routinely and it will not comment on specific cases.
But Falun Gong and human rights groups said the Falun Gong practitioners deported since late April include members from the United States, Taiwan, Macau and Australia.
The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights & Democracy said U.S. nationals Li Xiaobin and Xu Zhenmei were put on a flight to New York on Sunday afternoon after being refused entry when they arrived on Saturday night.
Hui Yee-han, a spokeswoman for the Falun Gong in Hong Kong, said: "We have had eight members denied entry so far and it's hard not to suspect that there is a black list."
The government declined comment on Monday, though immigration director Lee Siu-kwong said on Sunday that the government did not have a "black list" of overseas Falun Gong members. The U.S. consulate in Hong Kong declined comment.
The group has set out two full days of protests from Tuesday, when Jiang arrives to open an economic forum.
Falun Gong -- a mix of Buddhism, Taoism and Chinese exercises -- plans to protest against China's crackdown with group meditation exercises, petitions and a candlelight vigil.
The protests, potentially embarrassing for Jiang, could also help define the limits on the territory's freedoms. Hong Kong was granted a large degree of autonomy after Britain returned the former colony to Beijing in mid-1997.
Hong Kong leader Tung Chee-hwa accused Falun Gong in April of damaging the territory's interests and relations with Beijing by their planned protests during Jiang's stay.
"UNREASONABLY STRICT?"
The Falun Gong, which has seen many of its followers jailed and some die in Chinese detention, has been given the go-ahead by Hong Kong police to stage most of its events during the three-day Fortune Global Forum gathering.
But the group has been allocated locations far from the conference venue and its members are likely to be out of sight of Jiang and other leaders attending the conference.
"Police have been unreasonably strict. The locations are just too far away, and even with x-ray glasses and binoculars, people won't be able to see us," said Hui.
Police have thrown a tight security cordon around the venue at the harbor-front Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. They will deploy 3,000 officers to handle security, compared with 2,000 during the sovereignty handover ceremony in 1997.
Police have been checking sewers, bridges and the Hong Kong harbor for several days, looking for bombs and getting security barriers ready.
00:37 05-07-01
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