Dissident Female Reporter Denied China Re-Entry

China barred the country’s best-known woman dissident journalist, Dai Qing, from returning home Saturday for a holiday, leaving her stranded in Hong Kong.

Dai, 51, flew into Hong Kong from Europe and the United States, where she is a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

The Hong Kong government issued Dai a seven-day visa late Saturday after Chinese airline officials refused to allow her to board a flight to Beijing, telling her they were acting on instructions from the Chinese capital.

They offered to help her return to the United States, Dai said.

China’s Communist Party is growing increasingly nervous in the run-up to the anniversary of the army killing of pro-democracy demonstrators around Beijing’s Tian An Men Square on June 3-4, 1989.

“I am opposed to street student movements. I will take no action on June 4,” Dai said. “My return is not linked to June 4.”

Dai said officials would give no reason for refusing to allow her to return. Officials in Beijing were not immediately available for comment.

“If they refuse then I will go back to the United States. But I want to go back to China to live at the end of the year when the Nieman program ends,” Dai said. “I am Chinese.”

Dai was in the news last November when she was kidnaped by Chinese security agents and taken out of the capital for several days to prevent her meeting aides of Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who was visiting Beijing.

Dai’s defense of press freedom cost her several months in jail after the 1989 pro-democracy protests were crushed by the army.