HONG KONG: A teenage leader of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests was turned away at the airport on Tuesday when he tried to enter Malaysia, which said he has been blacklisted.

Joshua Wong said the immigration officials cited a “government order” when they stopped him at the airport in northern Penang state.

Immigration Director-General Mustafa Ibrahim said in a statement that Wong is banned from entering Malaysia but did not explain why. The 18-year-old was scheduled to speak at seminars in four Malaysian cities on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and about the Chinese government’s crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

He wrote on the Facebook page for his student activist group, Scholarism, that when he tried to call the local organisers after he was denied entry, immigration officials grabbed him by the arms.

He was then put on a Dragonair flight back to Hong Kong. Wong helped spearhead the student-led protests that gripped Hong Kong for nearly three months last year. At the peak, tens of thousands or more protesters demonstrated against election restrictions in the semiautonomous Chinese region, though the movement ended quietly as the government refused to offer concessions.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2015

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