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explaining to Lau that should Wu'er visit Macau, he would on return not be permitted to stay beyond the normal 48-hour transit period and would have to leave Hong Kong and submit a fresh visa application overseas if he wished to return again.
6. At the same time, another prominent campaigner for democracy in China, Hou Dejian has arrived in Hong Kong ostensibly for sightseeing on a transit visa. Hou is a Taiwanese composer who participated in the hunger strike in Peking that preceeded the June 4 incident. He was briefly jailed before the Chinese authorities asked him to leave. Hou intends to return to Taipei on 10 December and has been given a 48-hour transit stay.
7. Separately, we have learned that Han Dongfang, the Labour activist who has languished here since August, has decided to stage a campaign from 10-12 December in a prominent public place to collect signatures of support. Lau Chin-shek and the Hong Kong Alliance Democracy Group will apparently help with this.
COMMENT
8. As far as we know, there is no connection between any of these events. But we cannot rule out the possibility. Wu'er Kaixi, Hou, and Han presumably became mutually acquainted in Tiananmen Square, though we have heard that Wu'er Kaixi has since become estranged from mainstream Chinese dissidents, who have attacked him for having playboy tastes.
9. It is helpful (but surprising) that none of these activities has so far attracted publicity. If they did, we could probably expect Chinese protests about the use of Hong Kong as a "base for subversion". The Chinese might be particularly inclined to make an issue of this in the current atmosphere over Hong Kong's political development.
10. We would be grateful if visa issuing posts, particularly in the US, could be encouraged to redouble their vigilance over Hong Kong visa applications. We have recently had several cases of watch- listed individuals arriving with valid visas. At that point, we have no realistic alternative but to allow them entry. This undermines our ability to maintain a coherent visa policy and can, in specific instances, seriously jeopardise Hong Kong interests.
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