Jailing of dissident in China casts doubts on Hong Kong's autonomy

Jan 21, 2010, 1:54 GMT

Hong Kong - The jailing of a former Tiananmen Square dissident, who was handed over to mainland Chinese police a year ago by Hong Kong, has sparked questions over Hong Kong's autonomy, news reports said Thursday.

Zhou Yongjun, 42, a student leader in the 1989 pro-democracy movement, was reported to have been sentenced on Friday to nine years in prison by Shehong County People's Court in Sichuan Province, after being found guilty of attempted fraud.

However, Zhou's lawyers claim the crime was alleged to have taken place in Hong Kong, and the alleged victim was the Hong Kong-based Hang Seng Bank.

Zhou had originally been detained by police in Hong Kong but was handed over to mainland authorities after he declined to give his real identity.

Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 under a 'one country, two systems' agreement, which gives it a separate legal and political system and a mini-constitution that guarantees freedom of speech and political freedoms.

Lawyers representing Zhou claim Sichuan had no jurisdiction over the alleged crime and that his human rights have been violated.

'Under the 'one country, two systems,' none of the mainland judicial authorities have the right to handle a Hong Kong lawsuit,' one of the lawyers, Mo Shaoping, told the South China Morning Post.

Zhou, who has lived in the United States after fleeing mainland China, was handed over to authorities in China by Hong Kong immigration officers after he was found to be carrying a bogus passport when he arrived in September 2008 from Macau.

The charges stem from a complaint by the Hang Seng Bank over a suspicious request to transfer money from a bank account.

The bank account bore the same name as the bogus passport, which Zhou is believed to have used because he had no Chinese visa and wanted to visit his elderly parents.

His supporters claim immigration officers put him into a van and drove him across the border to mainland China against his will, even though there is no agreement for cross-border extradition between Hong Kong and China.

His girlfriend, Zhang Yuewei, claims Zhou's family only learned of his arrest and detention in Sichuan seven months after he had been placed in custody in mainland China.

Speaking to the South China Morning Post from Los Angeles, Zhang said that Hong Kong had violated the 'one country, two systems' agreement by sending Zhou to China.

Democratic Party Chairman Albert Ho said he believed Zhou's sentence related to his background as a student leader during the Tiananmen protest.

Zhou, one of the most prominent of the 1989 student demonstrators, was pictured kneeling on the steps of the Great Hall of the People during the Tiananmen Square protests pleading for political reforms.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of students were killed by Chinese troops in June 1989 when the pro-democracy movement was crushed in the streets around Tiananmen Square.