South African diplomats were on Tuesday demanding an explanation after an engineer transiting through Hong Kong on his way to seek work in New Zealand complained of being strip-searched and deported.
Fortune Mpofu claimed he was put through a humiliating nine-hour ordeal while in transit at Hong Kong International Airport on April 4 and was wrongly accused of having a bogus passport.
Mpofu (26) claims his luggage was broken and he was strip-searched three times — a claim denied by an immigration department official — before being put on a plane back to Johannesburg.
”I felt as if the world was crumbling around me,” Mpofu told Deutsche Presse-Agentur from South Africa. ”I was humiliated and stripped of my human dignity for no reason.”
”I was amazed at what happened to me, and I wouldn’t rule out racism because most of the people I saw being detained in Hong Kong at the same time as me were black.”
Mpofu, who is married and has a baby daughter, insists his passport is genuine and says he is considering taking legal action to seek compensation for his lost Cathay Pacific air ticket and job opportunity.
His case has been taken up by the South African consulate-general in Hong Kong, which says his treatment is part of a wider problem and that African passengers are disproportionately singled out for searches in the former British colony.
Primrose Zwedala, political consul for the South African mission in Hong Kong, said the immigration department should have contacted the consulate to check if Mpofu’s documents were genuine or not.
”Under normal circumstances if immigration officers believe there is something wrong with someone’s travel documents, they call us at the consulate and fax copies of the passport to us to verify, but they didn’t do it,” she said.
”We have been trying urgently to find out more about this case and the immigration department has agreed to meet us to discuss the situation.”
”This is a part of a general problem. There are other cases of black people being treated the same way in Hong Kong. We even get harassed even ourselves as diplomats.”
A Hong Kong Immigration Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied that Mpofu had been strip-searched, saying he had only been subjected to a normal routine search.
He was referred to immigration at the request of Cathay Pacific staff who said he did not have a visa to enter New Zealand, the source official said, adding: ”When we looked at his passport, we found that his passport picture didn’t look like him.”
However, South Africans can enter New Zealand without a visa for up to three months. Mpofu claims he had appointments with job agents in New Zealand and would have applied for a work permit once in the country.
A spokesperson for the Hong Kong Immigration Department said officers were legally authorised to conduct searches, adding: ”We fully respect the dignity and privacy of persons being searched.”
She said ”Any foreigners who are detained are allowed to contact their Consulate General in Hong Kong.” Asked about Mpofu, she replied: ”We do not comment on individual cases.” – Sapa-DPA