A student leader of the 1989 democracy protests in China who has been detained for over a year was handed over to mainland authorities by Hong Kong unlawfully, a Hong Kong lawmaker said Monday.
Hong Kong does not have a rendition treaty with mainland China so should not have transferred dissident Zhou Yongjun to the Chinese city of Shenzhen in September last year, Albert Ho, head of Hong Kong's Democratic Party, told AFP.
Zhou was stopped by Hong Kong officials while returning to China after years spent in the United States.
He was a leader of a student group involved in the Tiananmen Square protests that ended in an army crackdown that killed hundreds, possibly thousands in 1989.
"We are pressing for the government to explain why it sent him (Zhou) to the mainland," said Ho, who is acting as a lawyer for Zhou and his family.
Ho said he was also asking to see police records for Zhou's case.
Zhou, who is being held in a detention facility in his home province of Sichuan, has been charged with defrauding Hong Kong's Hang Seng bank, Ho said.
Zhou's girlfriend and supporters held a press conference in Hong Kong Monday to highlight his case.
The Hong Kong government said in a statement that it could not comment on individual cases but that its immigration department "handles all entry applications in accordance with the law and immigration policy having due regard to individual circumstances".
Hong Kong returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997 but was allowed to operate a separate legal and administrative system.
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