- Title: Thailand bars entry to teenage Hong Kong activist
- Date: 5th October 2016
- Summary: NONTHABURI, THAILAND (FILE-2016) (REUTERS) PLANE TAKING OFF AIRPLANES VARIOUS OF PEOPLE WALKING INSIDE SUVARNABHUMI AIRPORT
- Embargoed: 20th October 2016 05:06
- Keywords: Thailand Hong Kong protests Joshua Wong detained
- Location: BANGKOK, NONTHABURI, THAILAND
- City: BANGKOK, NONTHABURI, THAILAND
- Country: Thailand
- Topics: Crime/Law/Justice
- Reuters ID: LVA00252Q9BGL
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: A Hong Kong student activist who helped organise pro-democracy protests in the Chinese-ruled city in 2014 was detained on arrival in Thailand on Wednesday (October 5), immigration officials said.
Bespectacled Joshua Wong, 19, was detained in Bangkok where he had been invited to speak at two universities about Hong Kong's "Umbrella Movement" street protests and on setting up his political party, Demosisto.
A group of Thai student protest organizers were supposed to meet Wong at the airport but were told they were not allowed to communicate with him.
They said the flight was scheduled to arrive at 11:45 p.m. (1645 GMT) on Tuesday (October 4) and that they waited for about an hour before they received confirmation that he was detained.
Netiwit criticized this latest move from the Thai government.
"The Thai government doesn't understand the new generation. I think the Thai government should adjust their standpoint. They lean too much on the Chinese government which makes us lack intellectual freedom," said Netiwit.
Wong was invited by Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Political Science to speak on the 40th anniversary of the bloody crackdown by the Thai army on student protesters.
The group said the event will continue despite the absence of Joshua Wong.
Thailand has been ruled by a military junta since a 2014 coup which was widely condemned by the West. Since then, the generals running Thailand have forged closer ties with Beijing.
The protests in Hong Kong, the former British colony which returned to Chinese rule in 1997, presented Communist Party rulers in Beijing with one of their biggest political headaches in decades.
Wong was given 80 hours of community service by a Hong Kong court in August on a charge of unlawful assembly for taking part in a sit-in at the height of the protests in the Asian financial hub. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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