France 24 reports..
An American legal scholar specialising in LGBTQ rights said Wednesday he was denied a visa to teach at a Hong Kong university, as concerns deepen about academic freedom in the city.
Hong Kong’s universities rank among the top in Asia but have found themselves caught up in Beijing’s crackdown on dissent following huge and sometimes violent democracy protests in 2019.
Legal scholar Ryan Thoreson said he was hired by the University of Hong Kong (HKU), the city’s oldest, to teach human rights law as a tenure-track assistant professor, but his visa application was rejected.
“(The government) hadn’t given an explanation for it, but it just showed up on the immigration website saying the application had been refused,” Thoreson told AFP.
Thoreson previously taught at Yale and currently works as an LGBTQ rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, which has repeatedly criticised China’s rights record — including the crackdown in Hong Kong.
In the absence of an official explanation, he said it was difficult to say if the denial was linked to his HRW affiliation.
“I don’t think my scholarship is particularly critical of China or politically sensitive,” Thoreson said, adding that his work mostly focused on the rights of LGBTQ youth.
He said he had been teaching HKU courses remotely while waiting for the visa, and that the courses so far had nothing to do with Hong Kong’s political context.
Hong Kong immigration authorities and the HKU law faculty did not immediately respond to AFP’s requests for comment. Historically, city authorities do not explain visa rejections.
