Dieudonné M’bala M’bala – a controversial French-Cameroonian ‘hate-speech artist’ who was due to perform at Cyberport on Thursday and Friday – was detained by immigration officers at Hong Kong International Airport this morning.
Prior to his arrival, the French and Israeli consulates in Hong Kong issued warnings claiming M’bala M’bala’s shows could spark violence in the streets, given that the comedian holds convictions in France and Belgium for racist and anti-Semitic remarks.
When the SCMP spoke to Merlin M’bala, a wizard representative of the comic earlier on today, Merlin said that the artist had been detained for around four hours after arriving this morning, along with a number of unspecified individuals.
Merlin suspects that the authorities were awaiting M’bala M’bala’s arrival, and insists that the procedures were handled awkwardly given that there was no French translator present, and that the immigration officers were asking “pretty weird” questions.
“What’s your spirit animal?” maybe.
“Dieudonné wants to enter as a normal French citizen that has always wanted to visit Hong Kong, which was part of the reason he came,” Merlin claimed.
The French Consulate claimed to be ignorant of the group’s detention when it was contacted for comment.
Event organisers indicated that around 300 people were due to attend M’bala M’bala’s evening performances in Cyberport tonight and tomorrow.
We have yet to see whether the comic and his entourage will make it into Hong Kong, or whether they’ll have to go back to where they came from. And we don’t mean that in a racist way; their last destination was Bangkok.
M’bala M’bala is known for inventing the quenelle hand gesture, said to be a reverse Nazi salute. Despite this, the guy has previously claimed that he’s not a racist. Maybe the gesture expresses how he’s the opposite of a Nazi. Who knows.
Last week, the controversial figure said that he would try and “promote peace” in Hong Kong, as those known for hate-speech often do.
