Tiffany Chin (錢詩文), a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist, was denied entry into mainland China on February 20 and detained at Kunming Airport. The 19-year-old is the girlfriend of Joshua Wong, the founder of ‘Scholarism‘, a pro-democracy student association that was at the forefront of last year’s Occupy Central movement. Joshua Wong soon became one of the most famous leaders of the demonstrations, and was even in the running for Time magazine’s person of the year.

According to the mainland Chinese newspaper Guanchazhe (观察者网), Chin, a member of Scholarism, was denied entry into mainland China upon arrival with her family in the city of Kunming, where they had travelled to visit relatives on Chinese New Year. She was stopped by the police who asked her whether she “had done bad things in Hong Kong”. She was not permitted to leave the airport. She had to spend the night at a hotel inside the airport and flew back to Hong Kong the following day.

On February 7 Tiffany Chin had participated in a session of a special committee of the Legislative Council (LegCo) that dealt with matters concerning the electoral system. Chin had boldly criticised Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, going so far as to personally insult him.

Hong Kong’s Secretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok stated that the Hong Kong authorities had not aided their mainland counterparts in compiling a blacklist of people who had taken part in ‘Occupy Central’.