Exiled Hong Kong student activist Nathan Law, attended a protest outside Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome in 2020. On Saturday, Law was denied entry to Singapore. File Photo by Riccardo Antimiani/EPA
A Hong Kong pro-democracy activist living in self-exile was barred from entry to Singapore after arriving on Saturday despite the country having issued him a visa.
Nathan Law came to Singapore to speak at a conference. He had been issued a visa for the closed door, invitation-only event. But when he arrived, he was questioned for four hours then denied entry. He was sent on a flight Sunday back to San Francisco, which is where his plane to Singapore had departed from.
Law lives in Britain and has a British refugee passport. His Hong Kong passport was canceled last year.
The Singapore government cited “national interests” in disallowing Law into the city-state.
“A visa holder is still subject to further checks at point of entry into the country. That is what happened with Nathan Law,” a spokesperson from Singapore told the BBC.
Singapore has said it “takes a clear and strong stand against the importation of politics of other countries into Singapore.” It has an extradition treaty with China.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson on Monday said Law is “an anti-China, anti-Hong Kong troublemaker who has been lawfully placed on the wanted list by the Hong Kong police,” the BBC reported.
Law was a student leader of the Umbrella Movement in 2014. He and Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow founded the Demosisto party in 2016.
He left Hong Kong just days before China created a national security law on June 30, 2020, after pro-democracy protests in 2019. Police issued an arrest warrant for Law and seven other self-exiled activists in 2023. It accused him of secession and foreign collusion and put a $128,000 bounty on him.
His parents and brother were detained in Hong Kong in 2023 and questioned about whether they gave him any financial help. He said he had to cut ties with his family to protect them.
