A rowing coach working at the Hong Kong Sports Institute was refused entry because of an “I want genuine universal suffrage” sticker on her bag. Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying was visiting the institute at the time.

The coach, surnamed Tang, wrote on her Facebook page that security guards stopped her at a gate last Saturday, asking her what was her intention. Tang said she was a coach, and the guards asked for her identity document. They told her that her bag could not be admitted to the institute, or she should put it into another bag.

Tang asked what was the problem, and the guards “reluctantly” answered that Leung Chun-ying was visiting, and he was not to see the sticker on the bag.

A rowing coach working at the Hong Kong Sports Institute was denied entry because of an “I want genuine universal suffrage” sticker on her bag when Leung Chun-ying was visiting. Photo: Facebook and Gov HK.

“My first feeling was that it was ridiculous, did I carelessly bring [sticker of] ‘vindication of June 4th’ [crackdown] to Tiananmen Square?” Tang said in the post.

Leung was attending the opening ceremony of the institute after its redevelopment was completed.

She said she was going to work and did not intend to protest. The guards refused her request to go in while covering the sticker with her clothes, but finally allowed her to get in by putting the bag into a large travel bag.

Tang added that she was “very angry”, not at the guards “who were following orders”, but “how corrupt is this society that one is not allowed into a place because of different political views?”

Tang also said that it was a “white terror” tactic imposed by Leung. “Suppression will make us stronger,” she concluded.