Governments do not as a rule give explanations when they refuse visas.
Twenty years ago, I remember arguing with a Soviet official in London about the refusal to issue a visa to a correspondent to go to Moscow. After our second or third session, the official let slip that the reason was the journalist's reporting from the Balkans on a story that had angered the KGB secret police.
At our next session, clearly realising he had gone beyond the frontiers of diplomatic procedure, he asked me to forget what he had said. The journalist never got to Moscow.
Granting or refusing visas is entirely a matter for sovereign governments. So nobody, including legislator Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee, should expect any explanation of why she was not allowed to go to Beijing for a legal seminar 10 days ago.
But that will not limit the speculation or the political fall-out, which has been much deeper than when other pro-democracy legislators were prevented from crossing the frontier. The concern was sharpened by the fact that other critics of the SAR Government had been allowed in to attend the seminar. The obvious conclusion was that she was being punished for her past positions in Hong Kong, not for anything she might do on the mainland.
To confirm this, we had Ta Kung Pao pigeon-holing Ms Ng as one of 'those who hold different views and those who have acted to oppose 'one country, two systems' and to undermine the rule of law in the SAR'.
It must have come as a shock even to most of those who disagree with Ms Ng's opinions to see her classified as somebody out to undermine the rule of law. Her critics would probably say, on the contrary, that she puts too much emphasis on her view of the rule of law when it comes to practical matters like stopping mainland migrants flooding into Hong Kong or prosecuting a newspaper owner.
