A 28-YEAR-OLD mainland overstayer the Government said was a voluntary returnee has claimed she was forced to sign forms agreeing to her repatriation.
The woman says she was subjected to a four-hour ordeal of threats and shouted demands at Immigration Tower in Wan Chai and almost fainted before agreeing to persistent demands to sign repatriation papers.
Her claims raise further questions about the Immigration Department's treatment of the mainlanders they arrested for overstaying their visitation permits.
Mainlanders have reported a long list of claims of mistreatment in detention centres, saying they were routinely strip-searched and humiliated.
Rights advocates said they suspected mainlanders whom officials claimed had 'voluntarily returned' to the mainland might also have been pressured.
'It's difficult to say what happened to the ones who were sent back. We have no way of contacting them. But we suspect many of them were probably pressured into signing the forms,' said legislator Cyd Ho Sau-lan.
Ms Wong, who requested that only her surname be made public, has since returned to Hong Kong and has given an account of how she was 'pressured into signing' the repatriation papers.