Hong Kong alarm as China jails Tiananmen dissident

Zhou Yongjun's girlfriend Zhang Yuwei is campaigning for his release

Human rights advocates in Hong Kong have reacted with alarm after a mainland Chinese court jailed a Chinese dissident who visited the city.

Zhou Yongjun was sentenced to nine years by a court in Sichuan province for crimes allegedly committed when he came to Hong Kong in September 2008.
Hong Kong activists say Zhou should have faced charges in the city, and should never have been deported.
They say his treatment breaches China's "one country, two systems" policy.
Hong Kong is considered part of China but has a separate legal system.
'We have jurisdiction'
The 42-year-old dissident was sentenced for crimes that Sichuan had absolutely no jurisdiction over, said Human Rights Monitor executive director Law Yuk-kai.
"We would not send people back to mainland China, especially for something which was supposed to be done in Hong Kong," he said.
"And we have jurisdiction over the criminal activities here, not mainland China."
Zhou Yongjun famously knelt with two other students on the steps of the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989 demanding political reform.
He later lived in exile in the United States. He arrived in Hong Kong on a false Malaysian passport, wanting to visit his elderly parents in China.
His lawyers told the media that his case stemmed from an alleged fraud carried out in the territory.
The name on the passport he was using was on a money-laundering watch list, but his girlfriend told media he was given the passport by an immigration agency and it is a case of mistaken identity.
Normal practice would have been to return the dissident to Macau, the port from where he had travelled to Hong Kong, or to Malaysia, the country whose passport he was holding.
Zhou Yongjun has said he will appeal.
The BBC's Anne-Marie Evans says that whether the charges are real or not, the case throws into question just how safe other dissidents may feel in Hong Kong.