Two Thai transwomen were denied entry to the city by immigration officials for “no reason” on Saturday, in a move that has provoked criticism from a local rights group and Hong Kong netizens.
The Stand News reports that the two women arrived in Hong Kong on Saturday and told immigration officials that they intended to shop and see the sights, but were refused entry to the city.
According to the Transgender Resource Centre, when the travellers asked for the reason behind their rejection, they were told, “No reason for you. And we don’t want to listen to you.” The women further alleged that an officer asked if they had been “cut” – a crude way of inquiring whether they’d undergone sex reassignment surgery.
Officials then asked the women to sign two forms, which stated they had undergone complete sex reassignment surgery, and that they would immediately return to Thailand of their own volition. Refusing to sign the forms, the women returned to Bangkok that evening.
Speaking to Ming Pao, a spokeswoman for the Immigration Department denied that the women were rejected based on their gender identity, but rather that officers deemed them “suspicious” following “detailed questioning”, and were not convinced the travellers were “genuine tourists” as they claimed.
Joanne Leung, the chairwoman of the Transgender Resource Centre, slammed the immigration officers’ actions, saying they had “no proof of intent”. “They had booked a return ticket and a hotel room, [these women] were in Hong Kong purely for shopping,” Leung wrote.
She added that the pair had travelled extensively in the past to various countries without encountering such suspicion. Leung stated that she believed the incident to be an “individual case”, but warned that similar cases in the future could not only endanger the public’s trust in the Immigration Department, but also tarnish Hong Kong’s reputation as a civilised place.
Reactions from netizens have not been so measured – multiple Facebook commenters decried Hong Kong’s branding as “Asia’s World City” in light of the incident, with one calling Hong Kong “Asia’s World City of Discrimination”.
Others remarked on the “falling standards” and “cruelty” of the Immigration Department, while one man wrote, “A human is a human [and has] human rights”.
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